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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Abroad at Home, by Julian Street, Illustrated
+by Wallace Morgan
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Abroad at Home
+       American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street
+
+
+Author: Julian Street
+
+
+
+Release Date: April 25, 2011  [eBook #35965]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ABROAD AT HOME***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Corsetiere, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
+      file which includes the original illustrations.
+      See 35965-h.htm or 35965-h.zip:
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35965/35965-h/35965-h.htm)
+      or
+      (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35965/35965-h.zip)
+
+
+
+
+
+ABROAD AT HOME
+
+by
+
+JULIAN STREET
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+     THE NEED OF CHANGE
+
+     Fifth Anniversary Edition. Illustrated by James Montgomery Flagg.
+     Cloth, 50 cents net. Leather, $1.00 net.
+
+     PARIS A LA CARTE
+
+     "Gastronomic promenades" in Paris. Illustrated by May Wilson
+     Preston. Cloth, 60 cents net.
+
+     WELCOME TO OUR CITY
+
+     Mr. Street plays host to the stranger in New York. Illustrated by
+     James Montgomery Flagg and Wallace Morgan. Cloth, $1.00 net.
+
+     SHIP-BORED
+
+     Who hasn't been? Illustrated by May Wilson Preston. Cloth, 50 cents
+     net.
+
+     ABROAD AT HOME
+
+     Cheerful ramblings and adventures in American cities
+     and other places. Illustrated by Wallace Morgan. Cloth, $2.50 net.
+
+     For Children
+
+     THE GOLDFISH
+
+     A Christmas story for children between six and sixty.
+     Colored Illustrations and page Decorations. Cloth, 70 cents net.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+[Illustration: The St. Francis at tea-time.--With her hotels San
+Francisco is New York, but with her people she is San Francisco--which
+comes near being the apotheosis of praise]
+
+ABROAD AT HOME
+
+American Ramblings, Observations, and Adventures of Julian Street
+
+With Pictorial Sidelights by Wallace Morgan
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+New York
+The Century Co.
+1915
+
+Copyright, 1914, by
+The Century Co.
+
+Copyright, 1914, by
+P. F. Collier & Son, Inc.
+
+Published, November, 1914
+
+
+
+
+  TO MY FATHER
+  the companion of my first railroad journey
+
+
+
+
+The Author takes this opportunity to thank the old friends, and the new
+ones, who assisted him in so many ways, upon his travels. Especially, he
+makes his affectionate acknowledgment to his wise and kindly companion,
+the Illustrator, whose admirable drawings are far from being his only
+contribution to this volume.
+
+--J. S.
+
+New York,
+October, 1914.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAPTER                                        PAGE
+
+  STEPPING WESTWARD
+
+
+        I STEPPING WESTWARD                         3
+
+       II BIFURCATED BUFFALO                       21
+
+      III CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS                40
+
+       IV MORE CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS           48
+
+
+  MICHIGAN MEANDERINGS
+
+        V DETROIT THE DYNAMIC                      65
+
+       VI AUTOMOBILES AND ART                      77
+
+      VII THE MAECENAS OF THE MOTOR                91
+
+     VIII THE CURIOUS CITY OF BATTLE CREEK        105
+
+       IX KALAMAZOO                               121
+
+        X GRAND RAPIDS THE "ELECT"                127
+
+
+  CHICAGO
+
+       XI A MIDDLE-WESTERN MIRACLE                139
+
+      XII FIELD'S AND THE "TRIBUNE"               150
+
+     XIII THE STOCKYARDS                          164
+
+      XIV THE HONORABLE HINKY DINK                173
+
+       XV AN OLYMPIAN PLAN                        181
+
+      XVI LOOKING BACKWARD                        187
+
+
+  "IN MIZZOURA"
+
+     XVII SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS                     201
+
+    XVIII THE FINER SIDE                          221
+
+      XIX HANNIBAL AND MARK TWAIN                 237
+
+       XX PIKE AND POKER                          253
+
+      XXI OLD RIVER DAYS                          267
+
+
+  THE BEGINNING OF THE WEST
+
+     XXII KANSAS CITY                             275
+
+    XXIII ODDS AND ENDS                           291
+
+     XXIV COLONEL NELSON'S "STAR"                 302
+
+      XXV KEEPING A PROMISE                       313
+
+     XXVI THE TAME LION                           323
+
+    XXVII KANSAS JOURNALISM                       337
+
+   XXVIII A COLLEGE TOWN                          345
+
+     XXIX MONOTONY                                365
+
+
+  THE MOUNTAINS AND THE COAST
+
+      XXX UNDER PIKE'S PEAK                       379
+
+     XXXI HITTING A HIGH SPOT                     400
+
+    XXXII COLORADO SPRINGS                        417
+
+   XXXIII CRIPPLE CREEK                           434
+
+    XXXIV THE MORMON CAPITAL                      439
+
+     XXXV THE SMITHS                              454
+
+    XXXVI PASSING PICTURES                        465
+
+   XXXVII SAN FRANCISCO                           474
+
+  XXXVIII "BEFORE THE FIRE"                       488
+
+    XXXIX AN EXPOSITION AND A "BOOSTER"           498
+
+       XL NEW YORK AGAIN                          507
+
+
+
+
+LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+   The St. Francis at tea-time.--With her hotels
+   San Francisco is New York, but with her people
+   she is San Francisco--which comes near being      FACING
+   the apotheosis of praise.      _Frontispiece_     PAGE
+
+   I was moving about my room, my hands full of
+   hairbrushes and toothbrushes and clothes
+   brushes and shaving brushes; my head full of
+   railroad trains, and hills, and plains, and
+   valleys                                                5
+
+   A dusky redcap took my baggage                        12
+
+   What scenes these black, pathetic people had
+   passed through--were passing through! Why did
+   they not look up in wonderment?                       17
+
+   We made believe we wanted to go out and
+   smoke. And as we left our seats she made
+   believe she didn't know that we were going.           23
+
+   The gentleman who favored linen mesh was a
+   fat, prosperous-looking person, whose
+   gold-rimmed spectacles reflected flying lights
+   from out of doors                                     26
+
+   In a few hours there was enough shame around
+   us to have lasted all the reformers and
+   muckrakers I know a whole month                       32
+
+   My companion and I made excuses to go
+   downstairs and wash our hands in the public
+   washroom, just for the pleasure of doing so
+   without fear of being attacked by a swarthy
+   brigand with a brush                                  35
+
+   I was prepared to take the field against all
+   comers, not only in favor of simplicity, but
+   in favor of anything and everything which was
+   favored by my hostess                                 38
+
+   Chamber of Commerce representatives were with
+   us all the first day and until we went to our
+   rooms, late at night                                  43
+
+   It is an Elizabethan building, with a heavy
+   timbered front, suggesting some ancient,
+   hospitable, London coffee house where wits of
+   old were used to meet                                 46
+
+   In this charming, homelike old building,
+   with its grandfather's clock, its Windsor
+   chairs, and its open wood fires, a visitor
+   finds it hard to realize that he is in the
+   "west"                                                53
+
+   Down by the docks we saw gigantic, strange
+   machines, expressive of Cleveland's lake
+   commerce--machines for loading and unloading
+   ships in the space of a few hours                     60
+
+   In midstream passes a continual parade of
+   freighters ... and in their swell you may see,
+   teetering, all kinds of craft, from proud
+   white yachts to canoes                                71
+
+   The automobile has not only changed Detroit
+   from a quiet old town into a rich, active
+   city, but upon the drowsy romance of the old
+   days it has superimposed the romance of modern
+   business                                              74
+
+   Of course there was order in that place, of
+   course there was system--relentless
+   system--terrible "efficiency"--but to my mind it
+   expressed but one thing, and that thing was
+   delirium                                              97
+
+   Never, since then, have I heard men jeering
+   over women as they look in dishabille, without
+   wondering if those same men have ever seen
+   themselves clearly in the mirrored washroom
+   of a sleeping car                                    112
+
+   "Can that stuff," admonished Miss Buck in her
+   easy, offhand manner                                 117
+
+   She was saying to herself (and, unconsciously,
+   to us, through the window): "If _I_ had played
+   that hand, I never should have done
+   it _that_ way!"                                      124
+
+   Rodin's "Thinker"                                    145
+
+   Chicago's skyline from the docks.... A city
+   which rebuilt itself after the fire; in the
+   next decade doubled its size; and now has a
+   population of two million, plus a city of about
+   the size of San Francisco                            160
+
+   Two rabbis, old bearded men, performed the
+   rites with long, slim, shiny blades                  177
+
+   As I stood there, studying the temperament of
+   pigs, I saw the butcher looking up at me.... I
+   have never seen such eyes                            192
+
+   The bold front of Michigan Avenue along Grant
+   Park ... great buildings wreathed in whirling
+   smoke and that allegory of infinity which
+   confronts one who looks eastward                     196
+
+   The dilapidation of the quarter has continued
+   steadily from Dickens's day to this, and the
+   beauty now to be discovered there is that of
+   decay and ruin                                       205
+
+   The three used bridges which cross the
+   Mississippi River at St. Louis are privately
+   controlled toll bridges                              212
+
+   The skins are handled in the raw state ... with
+   the result that the floor of the exchange is
+   made slippery by animal fats, and that the
+   olfactory organs encounter smells not to be
+   matched in any zoo                                   221
+
+   St. Louis needs to be taken by the hand and
+   led around to some municipal-improvement
+   tailor, some civic haberdasher                       225
+
+   We came upon the "Mark Twain House."... And
+   to think that, wretched as this place was,
+   the Clemens family were forced to leave it for
+   a time because they were too poor to live there      240
+
+   At one side is an alley running back to the
+   house of Huckleberry Finn, and in that alley
+   stood the historic fence which young Sam
+   Clemens cajoled the other boys into
+   whitewashing for him                                 244
+
+   Never outside of Brittany and Normandy have
+   I seen roads so full of animals as those of
+   Pike County                                          253
+
+   Mr. Roberts is a wonder--nothing less. There's
+   a book in him, and I hope that somebody will
+   write it, for I should like to read that book        268
+
+   Looking down from Kersey Coates Drive, one
+   sees ... the appalling web of railroad tracks,
+   crammed with freight cars, which seen through
+   a softening haze of smoke, resemble a relief
+   map--strange, vast and pictorial                     289
+
+   Colonel Nelson is a "character." Even if he
+   didn't own the "Star," ... he would be a
+   "character."... I have called him a volcano;
+   he is more like one than any other man I have
+   ever met                                             304
+
+   Mr. Fish informed me that the waters of
+   Excelsior Springs resemble the waters of
+   Homburg, the favorite watering place of the
+   late King Edward--or, rather, I think he put
+   it the other way round                               322
+
+   We strolled in the direction of the old house,
+   that house of tragedy in which the family lived
+   in the troublous times.... It was there that
+   the Pinkertons threw the bomb                        328
+
+   It was Frank James.... He looks more like a
+   prosperous farmer or the president of a rural
+   bank than like a bandit. In his manner
+   there is a strong note of the showman                335
+
+   The campus seems to have "just
+   growed."... Nevertheless, there is a sort of
+   homely charm about the place, with its
+   unimposing, helter-skelter piles of brick and
+   stone                                                353
+
+   Even at sea the great bowl of the sky had
+   never looked to me so vast                           368
+
+   The little towns of western Kansas are far
+   apart and have, like the surrounding scenery,
+   an air of sadness and desolation                     373
+
+   In the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel we saw
+   several old fellows, sitting about, looking
+   neither prosperous nor busy, but always
+   talking mines. A kind word, or even a pleasant
+   glance, is enough to set them off                    380
+
+   "Ain't Nature wonderful!"                            405
+
+   I was by this time very definitely aware that
+   I had my fill of winter motoring in the
+   mountains. The mere reluctance I felt as we
+   began to climb had now developed into a
+   passionate desire to desist                          412
+
+   The homes of Colorado Springs really explain
+   the place and the society is as cosmopolitan
+   as the architecture                                  417
+
+   On the road to Cripple Creek we were always
+   turning, always turning upward                       432
+
+   We were invited to meet the President of the
+   Mormon Church and some members of his family
+   at the Beehive House, his official residence         452
+
+   The Lion House--a large adobe building in
+   which formerly resided the rank and file of
+   Brigham Young's wives                                461
+
+   The Cliff House has a Sorrento setting and
+   hectic turkey-trotting nights                        468
+
+   The Salt-water pool, Olympic Club, San Francisco     477
+
+   The switchboard of the Chinatown telephone
+   exchange is set in a shrine and the operators
+   are dressed in Chinese silks                         496
+
+   We believed we had encountered every kind of
+   "booster" that creeps, crawls, walks, crows,
+   cries, bellows, barks or brays, but it remained
+   for the Exposition to show us a new specimen         504
+
+   New York--Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone is
+   dodging everyone else. Everyone is trying to
+   keep his knees from being knocked by
+   swift-passing suitcases                              513
+
+
+
+
+STEPPING WESTWARD
+
+
+
+
+ABROAD AT HOME
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+STEPPING WESTWARD
+
+
+     "_What, you are stepping westward?_"--"_Yea._"
+     --'Twould be a wildish destiny,
+     If we, who thus together roam
+     In a strange Land, and far from home,
+     Were in this place the guests of Chance:
+     Yet who would stop or fear to advance,
+     Though home or shelter he had none,
+     With such a sky to lead him on?
+
+          --WORDSWORTH.
+
+
+For some time I have desired to travel over the United States--to ramble
+and observe and seek adventure here, at home, not as a tourist with a
+short vacation and a round-trip ticket, but as a kind of privateer with
+a roving commission. The more I have contemplated the possibility the
+more it has engaged me. For we Americans, though we are the most
+restless race in the world, with the possible exception of the Bedouins,
+almost never permit ourselves to travel, either at home or abroad, as
+the "guests of Chance." We always go from one place to another with a
+definite purpose. We never amble. On the boat, going to Europe, we talk
+of leisurely trips away from the "beaten track," but we never take them.
+After we land we rush about obsessed by "sights," seeing with the eyes
+of guides and thinking the "canned" thoughts of guidebooks.
+
+In order to accomplish such a trip as I had thought of I was even
+willing to write about it afterward. Therefore I went to see a publisher
+and suggested that he send me out upon my travels.
+
+I argued that Englishmen, from Dickens to Arnold Bennett, had "done"
+America; likewise Frenchmen and Germans. And we have traveled over there
+and written about them. But Americans who travel at home to write (or,
+as in my case, write to travel) almost always go in search of some
+specific thing: to find corruption and expose it, to visit certain
+places and describe them in detail, or to catch, exclusively, the comic
+side. For my part, I did not wish to go in search of anything specific.
+I merely wished to take things as they might come. And--speaking of
+taking things--I wished, above all else, to take a good companion, and I
+had him all picked out: a man whose drawings I admire almost as much as
+I admire his disposition; the one being who might endure my presence for
+some months, sharing with me his joys and sorrows and collars and
+cigars, and yet remain on speaking terms with me.
+
+The publisher agreed to all. Then I told my New York friends that I was
+going.
+
+[Illustration: I was moving about my room, my hands full of hairbrushes
+and toothbrushes and clothesbrushes and shaving brushes; my head full of
+railroad trains, and hills, and plains, and valleys]
+
+They were incredulous. That is the New York attitude of mind. Your
+"typical New Yorker" really thinks that any man who leaves Manhattan
+Island for any destination other than Europe or Palm Beach must be
+either a fool who leaves voluntarily or a criminal taken off by force.
+For the picturesque criminal he may be sorry, but for the fool he has
+scant pity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At a farewell party which they gave us on the night before we left, one
+of my friends spoke, in an emotional moment, of accompanying us as far
+as Buffalo. He spoke of it as one might speak of going up to Baffin Land
+to see a friend off for the Pole.
+
+I welcomed the proposal and assured him of safe conduct to that point in
+the "interior." I even showed him Buffalo upon the map. But the sight of
+that wide-flung chart of the United States seemed only to alarm him.
+After regarding it with a solemn and uneasy eye he shook his head and
+talked long and seriously of his responsibilities as a family man--of
+his duty to his wife and his limousine and his elevator boys.
+
+It was midnight when good-bys were said and my companion and I returned
+to our respective homes to pack. There were many things to be put into
+trunks and bags. A clock struck three as my weary head struck the
+pillow. I closed my eyes. Then when, as it seemed to me, I was barely
+dozing off there came a knocking at my bedroom door.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Six o'clock," replied the voice of our trusty Hannah.
+
+As I arose I knew the feelings of a man condemned to death who hears the
+warden's voice in the chilly dawn: "Come! It is the fatal hour!"
+
+When, fifteen minutes later, doubting Hannah (who knows my habits in
+these early morning matters) knocked again, I was moving about my room,
+my hands full of hairbrushes and toothbrushes and clothes brushes and
+shaving brushes; my head full of railroad trains, and hills, and plains
+and valleys, and snow-capped mountain peaks, and smoking cities and
+smoking-cars, and people I had never seen.
+
+The breakfast table, shining with electric light, had a night-time
+aspect which made eggs and coffee seem bizarre. I do not like to
+breakfast by electric light, and I had done so seldom until then; but
+since that time I have done it often--sometimes to catch the early
+morning train, sometimes to catch the early morning man.
+
+Beside my plate I found a telegram. I ripped the envelope and read this
+final punctuation-markless message from a literary friend:
+
+     _you are going to discover the united states dont be afraid to say
+     so_
+
+That is an awful thing to tell a man in the very early morning before
+breakfast. In my mind I answered with the cry: "But I _am_ afraid to say
+so!"
+
+And now, months later, I am still afraid to say so, because, despite a
+certain truth the statement may contain, it seems to me to sound
+ridiculous, and ponderous, and solemn with an asinine solemnity.
+
+It spoiled my last meal at home--that well-meant telegram.
+
+I had not swallowed my second cup of coffee when, from her switchboard,
+a dozen floors below, the operator telephoned to say my taxi had
+arrived; whereupon I left the table, said good-by to those I should miss
+most of all, took up my suit case and departed.
+
+Beside the curb there stood an unhappy-looking taxicab, shivering as
+with malaria, but the driver showed a face of brazen cheerfulness which,
+considering the hour and the circumstances, seemed almost indecent. I
+could not bear his smile. Hastily I blotted him from view beneath a pile
+of baggage.
+
+With a jerk we started. Few other vehicles disputed our right to the
+whole width of Seventy-second Street as we skimmed eastward. Farewell, O
+Central Park! Farewell, O Plaza! And you, Fifth Avenue, empty, gray,
+deserted now; so soon to flash with fascinating traffic. Farewell!
+Farewell!
+
+Presently, in that cavern in which vehicles stop beneath the overhanging
+cliffs of the Grand Central Station, we drew up. A dusky redcap took my
+baggage. I alighted and, passing through glass doors, gazed down on the
+vast concourse. Far up in the lofty spaces of the room there seemed to
+hang a haze, through which--from that amazing and audacious ceiling,
+painted like the heavens--there twinkled, feebly, morning stars of
+gold. Through three arched windows, towering to the height of six-story
+buildings, the eastern light streamed softly in, combining with the
+spaciousness around me, and the blue above, to fill me with a curious
+sense of paradox: a feeling that I was indoors yet out of doors.
+
+The glass dials of the four-faced clock, crowning the information bureau
+at the center of the concourse, glowed with electric light, yellow and
+sickly by contrast with the day which poured in through those windows.
+Such stupendous windows! Gargantuan spider webs whose threads were
+massive bars of steel. And suddenly I saw the spider! He emerged from
+one side, passed nimbly through the center of the web, disappeared,
+emerged again, crossed the second web and the third in the same way, and
+was gone--a two-legged spider, walking importantly and carrying papers
+in his hand. Then another spider came, and still another, each black
+against the light, each on a different level. For those windows are, in
+reality, more than windows. They are double walls of glass, supporting
+floors of glass--layer upon layer of crystal corridor, suspended in the
+air as by genii out of the Arabian Nights. And through these corridors
+pass clerks who never dream that they are princes in the modern kind of
+fairy tale.
+
+As yet the torrent of commuters had not begun to pour through the vast
+place. The floor lay bare and tawny like the bed of some dry river
+waiting for the melting of the mountain snows. Across the river bed
+there came a herd of cattle--Italian immigrants, dark-eyed, dumb,
+patient, uncomprehending. Two weeks ago they had left Naples, with
+plumed Vesuvius looming to the left; yesterday they had come to Ellis
+Island; last night they had slept on station benches; to-day they were
+departing; to-morrow or the next day they would reach their destination
+in the West. Suddenly there came to me from nowhere, but with a
+poignance that seemed to make it new, the platitudinous thought that
+life is at once the commonest and strangest of experiences. What scenes
+these black, pathetic people had passed through--were passing through!
+Why did they not look up in wonderment? Why were their bovine eyes
+gazing blankly ahead of them at nothing? What had dazed them so--the
+bigness of the world? Yet, after all, why should they understand? What
+American can understand Italian railway stations? They have always
+seemed to me to express a sort of mild insanity. But the Grand Central
+terminal I fancy I do understand. It seems to me to be much more than a
+successful station. In its stupefying size, its brilliant
+utilitarianism, and, most of all, in its mildly vulgar grandeur, it
+seems to me to express, exactly, the city to which it is a gate. That is
+something every terminal should do unless, as in the case of the
+Pennsylvania terminal in New York, it expresses something finer. The
+Grand Central Station _is_ New York, but that classic marvel over there
+on Seventh Avenue is more: it is something for New York to live up to.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When I had bought my ticket and moved along to count my change there
+came up to the ticket window a big man in a big ulster who asked in a
+big voice for a ticket to Grand Rapids. As he stood there I was
+conscious of a most un-New-York-like wish to say to him: "After a while
+I'm going to Grand Rapids, too!" And I think that, had I said it, he
+would have told me that Grand Rapids was "_some town_" and asked me to
+come in and see him, when I got there,--"at the plant," I think he would
+have said.
+
+As I crossed the marble floor to take the train I caught sight of my
+traveling companion leaning rigidly against the wall beside the gate. He
+did not see me. Reaching his side, I greeted him.
+
+He showed no signs of life. I felt as though I had addressed a waxwork
+figure.
+
+"Good morning," I repeated, calling him by name.
+
+"I've just finished packing," he said. "I never got to bed at all."
+
+At that moment a most attractive person put in an appearance. She was
+followed by a redcap carrying a lovely little Russia leather bag. A few
+years before I should have called a bag like that a dressing case, but
+watching that young woman as she tripped along with steps restricted by
+the slimness of her narrow satin skirt, it occurred to me that modes in
+baggage may have changed like those in woman's dress and that her
+little leather case might be a modern kind of wardrobe trunk.
+
+My companion took no notice of this agitating presence.
+
+"Look!" I whispered. "_She_ is going, too."
+
+Stiffly he turned his head.
+
+"The pretty girl," he remarked, with sad philosophy, "is always in the
+other car. That's life."
+
+"No," I demurred. "It's only early morning stuff."
+
+And I was right, for presently, in the parlor car, we found our seats
+across the aisle from hers.
+
+Before the train moved out a boy came through with books and magazines,
+proclaiming loudly the "last call for reading matter."
+
+I think the radiant being believed him, for she bought a magazine--a
+magazine of pretty girls and piffle: just the sort we knew she'd buy. As
+for my companion and me, we made no purchases, not crediting the
+statement that it was really the "last call." But I am impelled to add
+that having, later, visited certain book stores of Buffalo, Cleveland,
+and Detroit, I now see truth in what the boy said.
+
+For a time my companion and I sat and tried to make believe we didn't
+know that some one was across the aisle. And she sat there and played
+with pages and made believe she didn't know we made believe. When that
+had gone on for a time and our train was slipping silently along beside
+the Hudson, we felt we couldn't stand it any longer, so we made believe
+we wanted to go out and smoke. And as we left our seats she made believe
+she didn't know that we were going.
+
+Four men were seated in the smoking room. Two were discussing the merits
+of flannel versus linen mesh for winter underwear. The gentleman who
+favored linen mesh was a fat, prosperous-looking person, whose
+gold-rimmed spectacles reflected flying lights from out of doors.
+
+"If you'll wear linen," he declared with deep conviction--"and it wants
+to be a union suit, too--you'll never go back to shirt and drawers
+again. I'll guarantee that!" The other promised to try it. Presently I
+noticed that the first speaker had somehow gotten all the way from linen
+union suits to Portland, Me., on a hot Sunday afternoon. He said it was
+the hottest day last year, and gave the date and temperatures at certain
+hours. He mentioned his wife's weight, details of how she suffered from
+the heat, the amount of flesh she lost, the name of the steamer on which
+they finally escaped from Portland to New York, the time of leaving and
+arrival, and many other little things.
+
+I left him on the dock in New York. A friend (name and occupation given)
+had met him with a touring car (make and horsepower specified). What
+happened after that I do not know, save that it was nothing of
+importance. Important things don't happen to a man like that.
+
+[Illustration: A dusky redcap took my baggage]
+
+Two other men of somewhat Oriental aspect were seated on the leather
+sofa talking the unintelligible jargon of the factory. But, presently,
+emerged an anecdote.
+
+"I was going through our sorting room a while back," said the one
+nearest the window, "and I happened to take notice of one of the girls.
+I hadn't seen her before. She was a new hand--a mighty pretty girl, with
+a nice, round figure and a fine head of hair. She kept herself neater
+than most of them girls do. I says to myself: 'Why, if you was to take
+that girl and dress her up and give her a little education you wouldn't
+be ashamed to take her anywheres.' Well, I went over to her table and I
+says: 'Look at here, little girl; you got a fine head of hair and you'd
+ought to take care of it. Why don't you wear a cap in here in all this
+dust?' It tickled her to death to be noticed like that. And, sure
+enough, she did get a cap. I says to her: 'That's the dope, little girl.
+Take care of your looks. You'll only be young and pretty like this once,
+you know.' So one thing led to another, and one day, a while later, she
+come up to the office to see about her time slip or something, and I
+jollied her a little. I seen she was a pretty smart kid at that, so--"
+At that point he lowered his voice to a whisper, and leaned over so that
+his thick, smiling lips were close to his companion's ear. The motion of
+the train caused their hat brims to interfere. Disturbed by this, the
+raconteur removed his derby. His head was absolutely bald.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, I am not sure that I should have liked to hear the rest. I shifted
+my attention back to the apostle of the linen union suit, who had talked
+on, unremittingly. His conversation had, at least, the merit of entire
+frankness. He was a man with nothing to conceal.
+
+"Yes, sir!" I heard him declare, "every time you get on to a railroad
+train you take your life in your hands. That's a positive fact. I was
+reading it up just the other day. We had almost sixteen thousand
+accidents to trains in this country last year. A hundred and thirty-nine
+passengers killed and between nine and ten thousand injured. That's not
+counting employees, either--just passengers like us." He emphasized his
+statements by waving a fat forefinger beneath the listener's nose, and I
+noticed that the latter seemed to wish to draw his head back out of
+range, as though in momentary fear of a collision.
+
+For my part, I did not care for these statistics. They were not pleasant
+to the ears of one on the first leg of a long railroad journey. I rose,
+aimed the end of my cigar at the convenient nickel-plated receptacle
+provided for that purpose by the thoughtful Pullman Company, missed it,
+and retired from the smoking room. Or, rather, I emerged and went to
+luncheon.
+
+Our charming neighbor of the parlor car was already in the diner. She
+finished luncheon before we did, and, passing by our table as she left,
+held her chin well up and kept her eyes ahead with a precision almost
+military--almost, but not quite. Try as she would, she was unable to
+control a slight but infinitely gratifying flicker of the eyelids, in
+which nature triumphed over training and femininity defeated feministic
+theory.
+
+A little later, on our way back to the smoking room, we saw her seated,
+as before, behind the sheltering ramparts of her magazine. This time it
+pleased our fancy to take the austere military cue from her. So we filed
+by in step, as stiff as any guardsmen on parade before a princess seated
+on a green plush throne. Resolutely she kept her eyes upon the page. We
+might have thought she had not noticed us at all but for a single sign.
+She uncrossed her knees as we passed by.
+
+In the smoking room we entered conversation with a young man who was
+sitting by the window. He proved to be a civil engineer from Buffalo. He
+had lived in Buffalo eight years, he said, without having visited
+Niagara Falls. ("I've been meaning to go, but I've kept putting it
+off.") But in New York he had taken time to go to Bedloe Island and
+ascend the Statue of Liberty. ("It's awfully hot in there.") Though my
+companion and myself had lived in New York for many years, neither of us
+had been to Bedloe Island. But both of us had visited the Falls. The
+absurd humanness of this was amusing to us all; to my companion and me
+it was encouraging as well, for it seemed to give us ground for hope
+that, in our visits to strange places, we might see things which the
+people living in those places fail to see.
+
+When, after finishing our smoke, we went back to our seats, the being
+across the way began to make believe to read again. But now and then,
+when some one passed, she would look up and make believe she wished to
+see who it might be. And always, after doing so, she let her eyes trail
+casually in our direction ere they sought the page again. And always we
+were thankful.
+
+As the train slowed down for Rochester we saw her rise and get into her
+slinky little coat. The porter came and took her Russia leather bag.
+Meanwhile we hoped she would be generous enough to look once more before
+she left the car. Only once more!
+
+But she would not. I think she had a feeling that frivolity should cease
+at Rochester; for Rochester, we somehow sensed, was home to her. At all
+events she simply turned and undulated from the car.
+
+That was too much! Enough of make-believe! With one accord we swung our
+chairs to face the window. As she appeared upon the platform our noses
+almost touched the windowpane and our eyes sent forth forlorn appeals.
+She knew that we were there, yet she walked by without so much as
+glancing at us.
+
+We saw a lean old man trot up to her, throw one arm about her shoulders,
+and kiss her warmly on the cheek. Her father--there was no mistaking
+that. They stood there for a moment on the platform talking eagerly; and
+as they talked they turned a little bit, so that we saw her smiling up
+at him.
+
+[Illustration: What scenes these black, pathetic people had passed
+through--were passing through! Why did they not look up in wonderment?]
+
+Then, to our infinite delight, we noticed that her eyes were slipping,
+slipping. First they slipped down to her father's necktie. Then sidewise
+to his shoulder, where they fluttered for an instant, while she tried to
+get them under control. But they weren't the kind of eyes which are
+amenable. They got away from her and, with a sudden leap, flashed up at
+us across her father's shoulder! The minx! She even flung a smile! It
+was just a little smile--not one of her best--merely the fragment of a
+smile, not good enough for father, but too good to throw away.
+
+Well--it was not thrown away. For it told us that she knew our lives had
+been made brighter by her presence--and that she didn't mind a bit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pushing on toward Buffalo as night was falling, my companion and I
+discussed the fellow travelers who had most engaged our notice: the
+young engineer from Buffalo, keen and alive, with a quick eye for the
+funny side of things; the hairless amorist; the genial bore, whose wife
+(we told ourselves) got very tired of him sometimes, but loved him just
+because he was so good; the pretty girl, who couldn't make her eyes
+behave because she was a pretty girl. We guessed what kind of house each
+one resided in, the kind of furniture they had, the kind of pictures on
+the walls, the kind of books they read--or didn't read. And I believed
+that we guessed right. Did we not even know what sort of underwear
+encased the ample figure of the man with the amazing memory of
+unessential things? And, while touching on this somewhat delicate
+subject, were we not aware that if the alluring being who left the
+train, and us, at Rochester possessed the once-so-necessary garment
+called a petticoat, that petticoat was hanging in her closet?
+
+All this I mention because the thought occurred to me then (and it has
+kept recurring since) that places, no less than persons, have characters
+and traits and habits of their own. Just as there are colorless people
+there are colorless communities. There are communities which are strong,
+self-confident, aggressive; others lazy and inert. There are cities
+which are cultivated; others which crave "culture" but take "culturine"
+(like some one drinking from the wrong bottle); and still others almost
+unaware, as yet, that esthetic things exist. Some cities seem to fairly
+smile at you; others are glum and worried like men who are ill, or
+oppressed with business troubles. And there are dowdy cities and
+fashionable cities--the latter resembling one another as fashionable
+women do. Some cities seem to have an active sense of duty, others not.
+And almost all cities, like almost all people, appear to be capable
+alike of baseness and nobility. Some cities are rich and proud like
+self-made millionaires; others, by comparison, are poor. But let me
+digress here to say that, though I have heard mention of "hard times" at
+certain points along my way, I don't believe our modern generation knows
+what hard times really are. To most Americans the term appears to
+signify that life is hard indeed on him who has no motor car or who
+goes without champagne at dinner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My contacts with many places and persons I shall mention in the
+following chapters have, of necessity, been brief. I have hardly more
+than glimpsed them as I glimpsed those fellow travelers on the train.
+Therefore I shall merely try to give you some impressions, from a sort
+of mental sketchbook, of the things which I have seen and done and
+heard. There is one point in particular about that sketchbook: in it I
+have reserved the right to set down only what I pleased. It has been
+hard to do that sometimes. People have pulled me this way and that,
+telling me what to see and what not to see, what to write and what to
+leave out. I have been urged, for instance, to write about the varied
+industries of Cleveland, the parks of Milwaukee, and the enormous red
+apples of Louisiana, Mo. I may come to the apples later on, for I ate a
+number of them and enjoyed them; but the varied industries of Cleveland
+and the Milwaukee parks I did not eat.
+
+I claim the further right to ignore, when I desire to, the most
+important things, or to dwell with loving pen upon the unimportant.
+Indeed, I reserve all rights--even to the right to be perverse.
+
+Thus I shall mention things which people told me not to mention: the
+droll Detroit Art Museum; the comic chimney rising from the center of a
+Grand Rapids park; horrendous scenes in the Chicago stockyards; the
+Free Bridge, standing useless over the river at St. Louis for want of
+an approach; the "wettest block"--a block full of saloons, which marks
+the dead line between "wet" Kansas City, Mo., and "dry" Kansas City,
+Kas. (I never heard about that block until a stranger wrote and told me
+not to mention it.)
+
+As for statistics, though I have been loaded with them to the point of
+purchasing another trunk, I intend to use them as sparingly as possible.
+And every time I use them I shall groan.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+BIFURCATED BUFFALO
+
+
+Alighting from the train at Buffalo, I was reminded of my earlier
+reflection that railway stations should express their cities. In Buffalo
+the thought is painful. If that city were in fact, expressed by its
+present railway stations, people would not get off there voluntarily;
+they would have to be put off. And yet, from what I have been told, the
+curious and particularly ugly relic which is the New York Central
+Station there, to-day, does tell a certain story of the city. Buffalo
+has long been torn by factional quarrels--among them a protracted fight
+as to the location of a modern station for the New York Central Lines.
+The East Side wants it; the West Side wants it. Neither has it. The old
+station still stands--at least it was standing when I left Buffalo, for
+I was very careful not to bump it with my suit case.
+
+This difference of opinion between the East Side and the West with
+regard to the placing of a station is, I am informed, quite typical of
+Buffalo. Socially, commercially, religiously, politically, the two sides
+disagree. The dividing line between them, geographically, is not, as
+might be supposed, Division Street. (That, by the way, is a peculiarity
+of highways called "Division Street" in most cities--they seldom divide
+anything more important than one row of buildings from another.) The
+real street of division is called Main.
+
+Main Street! How many American towns and cities have used that name, and
+what a stupid name it is! It is as characterless as a number, and it
+lacks the number's one excuse for being. If names like Tenth Street or
+Eleventh Avenue fail to kindle the imagination they do not fail, at all
+events, to help the stranger find his way--although it should be added
+that strangers do, somehow, manage to find their way about in London,
+Paris, and even Boston, where the modern American system of numbering
+streets and avenues is not in vogue. But I am not agitating against the
+numbering of streets. Indeed, I fear I rather believe in it, as I
+believe in certain other dull but useful things like work and government
+reports. What I am crying out about is the stupid naming of such streets
+as carry names. Why do we have so many Main Streets? Do you think we
+lack imagination? Then look at the names of Western towns and Kansas
+girls and Pullman cars! The thing is an enigma.
+
+Main Street is not only a bad name for a thoroughfare; the quality which
+it implies is unfortunate. And that quality may be seen in Main Street,
+Buffalo. On an exaggerated scale that street _is_ like the Main Street
+of a little town, for the business district, the retail shopping
+district, all the city's activities string along on either side. It is
+bad for a city to grow in that elongated way just as it is bad for a
+human being. To either it imparts a kind of gawky awkwardness.
+
+[Illustration: We made believe we wanted to go out and smoke. And as we
+left our seats she made believe she didn't know that we were going]
+
+The development of Main Street, Buffalo, has been natural. That is just
+the trouble; it has been too natural. Originally it was the Iroquois
+trail; later the route followed by the stages coming from the East. So
+it has grown up from log-cabin days. It is a fine, broad street; all
+that it lacks is "features." It runs along its wide, monotonous way
+until it stops in the squalid surroundings of the river; and if the
+river did not happen to be there to stop it, it would go on and on
+developing, indefinitely, and uninterestingly, in that direction as well
+as in the other.
+
+The thing which Buffalo lacks physically is a recognizable center; a
+point at which a stranger would stop, as he stops in Piccadilly Circus
+or the Place de l'Opera, and say to himself with absolute assurance:
+"Now I am at the very heart of the city." Every city ought to have a
+center, and every center ought to signify in its spaciousness, its
+arrangement and its architecture, a city's dignity. Buffalo is,
+unfortunately, far from being alone in her need of such a thing. Where
+Buffalo is most at fault is that she does not even seem to be thinking
+of municipal distinction. And very many other cities are. Cleveland is
+already attaining it in a manner which will be magnificent; Chicago has
+long planned and is slowly executing; Denver has work upon a splendid
+municipal center well under way; so has San Francisco; St. Louis,
+Milwaukee, and Grand Rapids have plans for excellent municipal
+improvements. Even St. Paul is waking up and widening an important
+business street.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Every one knows that what is called "a wave of reform" has swept across
+the country, but not every one seems to know that there is also surging
+over the United States a "wave" of improved public taste. I shall write
+more of this later. Suffice it now to say that it manifests itself in
+countless forms: in municipal improvements of the kind of which the
+Cleveland center is, perhaps, the best example in the country; in
+architecture of all classes; in household furniture and decoration; in
+the tendency of art museums to realize that modern American paintings
+are the finest modern paintings obtainable in the world to-day; in the
+tendency of private art collectors not to buy quite so much rubbish as
+they have bought in the past; in the Panama-Pacific Exposition, which
+will be the most beautiful exposition anybody ever saw; and in
+innumerable other ways. Indeed, public taste in the United States has,
+in the last ten years, taken a leap forward which the mind of to-day
+cannot hope to measure. The advance is nothing less than marvelous, and
+it is reflected, I think, in every branch of art excepting one: the
+literary art, which has in our day, and in our country, reached an
+abysmal depth of degradation.
+
+With Cleveland so near at hand as an example, and so many other
+American cities thinking about civic beauty, Buffalo ought soon to begin
+to rub her eyes, look about, and cast up her accounts. Perhaps her
+trouble is that she is a little bit too prosperous with an olden-time
+prosperity; a little bit too somnolent and satisfied. There is plenty to
+eat; business is not so bad; there are good clubs, and there is a
+delightful social life and a more than ordinary degree of cultivation.
+Furthermore, there may be a new station for the New York Central some
+day, for it is a fact that there are now some street cars which actually
+_cross_ Main Street, instead of stopping at the Rubicon and making
+passengers get out, cross on foot, and take the other car on the other
+side! That, in itself, is a startling state of things. Evidently all
+that is needed now is an earthquake.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I have remarked before that cities, like people, have habits. Just as
+Detroit has the automobile habit, Pittsburgh the steel habit, Erie, Pa.,
+the boiler habit, Grand Rapids the furniture habit, and Louisville the
+(if one may say so) whisky habit, Buffalo had in earlier times the
+transportation habit. The first fortunes made in Buffalo came originally
+from the old Central Wharf, where toll was taken of the passing
+commerce. Hand in hand with shipping came that business known by the
+unpleasant name of "jobbing." From the opening of the Erie Canal until
+the late seventies, jobbing flourished in Buffalo, but of recent years
+her jobbing territory has diminished as competition with surrounding
+centers has increased.
+
+The early profits from docks and shipping were considerable. The
+business was easy; it involved comparatively small investment and but
+little risk. So when, with the introduction of through bills of lading,
+this business dwindled, it was hard for Buffalo to readjust herself to
+more daring ventures, such as manufacturing. "For," as a Buffalo man
+remarked to me, "there is only one thing more timid than a million
+dollars, and that is two million." It was the same gentleman, I think,
+who, in comparing the Buffalo of to-day with the Buffalo of other days,
+called my attention to the fact that not one man in the city is a
+director of a steam railroad company.
+
+From her geographical position with regard to ore, limestone, and coal
+it would seem that Buffalo might well become a great iron and steel city
+like Cleveland, but for some reason her ventures in this direction have
+been unfortunate. One steel company in which Buffalo money was invested,
+failed; another has been struggling along for some years and has not so
+far proved profitable. Some Buffalonians made money in a land boom a
+dozen or so years since; then came the panic, and the boom burst with a
+loud report, right in Buffalo's face.
+
+Back of most of this trouble there seems to have been a streak of real
+ill luck.
+
+[Illustration: The gentleman who favored linen mesh was a fat,
+prosperous-looking person, whose gold-rimmed spectacles reflected flying
+lights from out of doors]
+
+There is a great deal of money in Buffalo, but it is wary
+money--financial wariness seems to be another Buffalo habit. And there
+are other cities with the same characteristic. You can tell them
+because, when you begin to ask about various enterprises, people will
+say: "No, we haven't this and we haven't that, but this is a safe town
+in times of financial panic." That is what they say in Buffalo; they
+also say it in St. Louis and St. Paul. But if they say it in Chicago, or
+Minneapolis, or Kansas City, or in those lively cities of the Pacific
+slope, I did not hear them. Those cities are not worrying about
+financial panics which may come some day, but are busy with the things
+which are.
+
+If you ask a Buffalo man what is the matter with his city, he will, very
+likely, sit down with great solemnity and try to tell you, and even call
+a friend to help him, so as to be sure that nothing is overlooked. He
+may tell you that the city lacks one great big dominating man to lead it
+into action; or that there has been, until recently, lack of cooperation
+between the banks; or that there are ninety or a hundred thousand Poles
+in the city and only about the same number of people springing from what
+may be called "old American stock." Or he may tell you something else.
+
+If, upon the other hand, you ask a Minneapolis man that question, what
+will he do? He will look at you pityingly and think you are demented.
+Then he will tell you very positively that there is nothing the matter
+with Minneapolis, but that there is something definitely the matter with
+any one who thinks there is! Yes, indeed! If you want to find out what
+is the matter with Minneapolis, it is still necessary to go for
+information to St. Paul. As you proceed westward, such a question
+becomes increasingly dangerous.
+
+Ask a Kansas City man what is wrong with his town and he will probably
+attack you; and as for Los Angeles--! Such a question in Los Angeles
+would mean the calling out of the National Guard, the Chamber of
+Commerce, the Rotary Club, and all the "boosters" (which is to say the
+entire population of the city); the declaring of martial law, a trial by
+summary court-martial, and your immediate execution. The manner of your
+execution would depend upon the phrasing of your question. If you had
+asked: "Is there anything wrong with Los Angeles?" they'd probably be
+content with selling you a city lot and then hanging you; but if you
+said: "What _is_ wrong with Los Angeles?" they would burn you at the
+stake and pickle your remains in vitriol.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At this juncture I find myself oppressed with the idea that I haven't
+done Buffalo justice. Also, I am annoyed to discover that I have written
+a great deal about business. When I write about business I am almost
+certain to be wrong. I dislike business very much--almost as much as I
+dislike politics--and the idea of infringing upon the field of friends
+of mine like Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, Miss Tarbell, Samuel
+Hopkins Adams, Will Irwin, and others, is extremely distasteful to me.
+But here is the trouble: so many writers have run a-muckraking that,
+now-a-days, when a writer appears in any American city, every one assumes
+that he is scouting around in search of "shame." The result is that you
+don't have to hunt for shame. People bring it to you by the cartload.
+They don't give you time to explain that you aren't a shame
+collector--that you don't even know a good piece of shame when you see
+it--they just drive up, dump it at your door, and go back to get another
+load.
+
+My companion and I were new at the game in Buffalo. As the loads of
+shame began to arrive, we had a feeling that something was going wrong
+with our trip. We had come in search of cheerful adventure, yet here we
+were barricaded in by great bulwarks of shame. In a few hours there was
+enough shame around us to have lasted all the reformers and muckrakers I
+know a whole month. We couldn't see over the top of it. It hypnotized
+us. We began to think that probably shame _was_ what we wanted, after
+all. Every one we met assumed it was what we wanted, and when enough
+people assume a certain thing about you it is very difficult to buck
+against them. By the second day we had ceased to be human and had begun
+to act like muckrakers. We became solemn, silent, mysterious. We would
+pick up a piece of shame, examine it, say "_Ha!_" and stick it in our
+pockets. When some white-faced Buffalonian would drive up with another
+load of shame I would go up to him, wave my finger under his nose and,
+trying to look as much like Steffens as I could, say in a sepulchral
+voice: "Come! Out with it! What are you holding back? Tell me all! Who
+tore up the missing will?" Then that poor, honest, terrified Buffalonian
+would gasp and try to tell me all, between his chattering teeth. And
+when he had told me all I would continue to glare at him horribly, and
+ask for more. Then he would begin making up stories, inventing the most
+frightful and shocking lies so as not to disappoint me. I would print
+some of them here, but I have forgotten them. That is the trouble with
+the amateur muckraker or reformer. His mind isn't trained to his work.
+He is constantly allowing it to be diverted by some pleasant thing.
+
+For instance, some one pointed out to me that the water front of the
+city, along the Niagara River, is so taken up by the railroads that the
+public does not get the benefit of that water life which adds so much to
+the charm of Cleveland and Detroit. That situation struck me as
+affording an excellent piece of muck to rake. For isn't it always the
+open season so far as railroads are concerned?
+
+I ought to have kept my mind on that, but in my childlike way I let
+myself go ambling off through the parks. I found the parks delightful,
+and in one of them I came upon a beautiful Greek temple, built of marble
+and containing a collection of paintings of which any city should be
+proud. Now that is a disconcerting sort of thing to find when you have
+just abandoned yourself to the idea of becoming a muckraker! How can
+you muckrake a gallery like that? It can't be done.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With the possible exception of the Chicago Art Institute my companion
+and I did not see, upon our entire journey, any gallery of art in which
+such good judgment had been shown in the selection of paintings as in
+the Albright Gallery in Buffalo. Though the Chicago Art Institute is
+much the larger and richer museum, and though its collection is more
+comprehensive, its modern art is far more heterogeneous than that of
+Buffalo. One admires that Albright Gallery not only for the paintings
+which hang upon its walls, but also for those which do not hang there.
+Judgment has been shown not only in selecting paintings, but (one
+concludes) in rejecting gifts. I do not know that the Albright Gallery
+has rejected gifts, but I do know that the Metropolitan Museum of Art in
+New York and the Chicago Art Institute have, at times, failed to reject
+gifts which should have been rejected. Almost all museums fail in that
+respect in their early days. When a rich man offers a bad painting, or a
+roomful of bad paintings, the museum is afraid to say "No," because rich
+men must be propitiated. That has been the curse of art museums; they
+have to depend on rich men for support. And rich men, however generous
+they may be, and however much they may be interested in art, are, for
+the most part, lacking in any true and deep understanding of it. That
+is one trouble with being rich--it doesn't give you time to be much of
+anything else. If rich men really did _know_ art, there would not be so
+many art dealers, and so many art dealers would not be going to
+expensive tailors and riding in expensive limousines.
+
+Those who control the Albright Gallery have been wise enough to
+specialize in modern American painting. They have not been impressed, as
+so many Americans still are impressed, by the sound of the word
+"Europe." Nor have they attempted to secure old masters.
+
+Does it not seem a mistake for any museum not possessed of enormous
+wealth to attempt a collection of old masters? A really fine example of
+the work of an old master ties up a vast amount of money, and, however
+splendid it may be, it is only one canvas, after all; and one or two or
+three old masters do not make a representative collection. Rather, it
+seems to me, they tend to disturb balance in a small museum.
+
+To many American ears "Europe" is still a magic word. It makes little
+difference that Europe remains the happy hunting ground of the advanced
+social climber; but it makes a good deal of difference that so many
+American students of the arts continue to believe that there is some
+mystic thing to be gotten over there which is unobtainable at home.
+Europe has done much for us and can still do much for us, but we must
+learn not to accept blindly as we have in the past. Until quite
+recently, American art museums did, for the most part, buy European
+art which was in many instances absolutely inferior to the art produced
+at home. And unless I am very much mistaken a third-rate portrait
+painter, with a European name (and a clever dealer to push him) can
+still come over here and reap a harvest of thousands while Americans
+with more ability are making hundreds.
+
+[Illustration: In a few hours there was enough shame around us to have
+lasted all the reformers and muckrakers I know a whole month]
+
+One of the brightest signs for American painting to-day is the fact that
+it is now found profitable to make and sell forgeries of the works of
+our most distinguished modern artists--even living ones. This is a new
+and encouraging situation. A few years ago it was hardly worth a
+forger's time to make, say, a false Hassam, when he might just as well
+be making a Corot--which reminds me of an amusing thing a painter said
+to me the other day.
+
+We were passing through an art gallery, when I happened to see at the
+end of one room three canvases in the familiar manner of Corot.
+
+"What a lot of Corots there are in this country," I remarked.
+
+"Yes," he replied. "Of the ten thousand canvases painted by Corot, there
+are thirty thousand in the United States."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are two interesting hotels in Buffalo. One, the Iroquois, is
+characterized by a kind of solid dignity and has for years enjoyed a
+high reputation. It is patronized to-day at luncheon time by many of
+Buffalo's leading business men. Another, the Statler, is more
+"commercial" in character. My companion and I happened to stop at the
+latter, and we became very much interested in certain things about it.
+For one thing, every room in the hotel has running ice water and a
+bath--either a tub or a shower. Everywhere in that hotel we saw signs.
+At the desk, when we entered, hung a sign which read: _Clerk on duty,
+Mr. Pratt_.
+
+There were signs in our bedrooms, too. I don't remember all of them, but
+there was one bearing the genial invitation: _Criticize and suggest for
+the improvement of our service. Complaint and suggestion box in lobby._
+
+While I was in that hotel I had nothing to "criticize and suggest," but
+I have been in other hotels where, if such an invitation had been
+extended to me, I should have stuffed the box.
+
+Besides the signs, we found in each of our rooms the following: a
+clothes brush; a card bearing on one side a calendar and on the other
+side a list of all trains leaving Buffalo, and their times of departure;
+a memorandum pad and pencil by the telephone; a Bible ("Placed in this
+hotel by the Gideons"), and a pincushion, containing not only a variety
+of pins (including a large safety pin), but also needles threaded with
+black thread and white, and buttons of different kinds, even to a
+suspender button.
+
+[Illustration: My companion and I made excuses to go downstairs and wash
+our hands in the public washroom, just for the pleasure of doing so
+without fear of being attacked by a swarthy brigand with a brush]
+
+But aside from the prompt service we received, I think the thing which
+pleased us most about that hotel was a large sign in the public wash
+room, downstairs. Had I come from the West I am not sure that sign would
+have startled me so much, but coming from New York--! Well, this is what
+it said:
+
+     _Believing that voluntary service in washrooms is distasteful to
+     guests, attendants are instructed to give no service which the
+     guest does not ask for._
+
+Time and again, while we were in Buffalo, my companion and I made
+excuses to go downstairs and wash our hands in the public washroom, just
+for the pleasure of doing so without fear of being attacked by a swarthy
+brigand with a brush. We became positively fond of the melancholy
+washroom boy in that hotel. There was something pathetic in the way he
+stood around waiting for some one to say: "Brush me!" Day after day he
+pursued his policy of watchful waiting, hoping against hope that
+something would happen--that some one would fall down in the mud and
+really need to be brushed; that some one would take pity on him and let
+himself be brushed anyhow. The pathos of that boy's predicament began to
+affect us deeply. Finally we decided, just before leaving Buffalo, to go
+downstairs and let him brush us. We did so. When we asked him to do it
+he went very white at first. Then, with a glad cry, he leaped at us and
+did his work. It was a real brushing we got that day--not a mere slap on
+the back with a whisk broom, meaning "Stand and deliver!" but the kind
+of brushing that takes the dust out of your clothes. The wash room was
+full of dust before he got through. Great clouds of it went floating up
+the stairs, filling the hotel lobby and making everybody sneeze. When he
+finished we were renovated. "How much do you think we ought to give him
+for all this?" I asked of my companion.
+
+"If the conventional dime which we give the washroom boys in New York
+hotels," he replied, "is proper payment for the services they render, I
+should say we ought to give this boy about twenty-seven dollars."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are many other things about Buffalo which should be mentioned.
+There is the Buffalo Club--the dignified, solid old club of the city;
+and there is the Saturn Club, "where women cease from troubling and the
+wicked are at rest." And there is Delaware Avenue, on which stand both
+these clubs, and many of the city's finest homes.
+
+Unlike certain famous old residence streets in other cities, Delaware
+Avenue still holds out against the encroachments of trade. It is a wide,
+fine street of trees and lawns and residences. Despite the fact that
+many of its older houses are of the ugly though substantial architecture
+of the sixties, seventies, and eighties, and many of its newer ones lack
+architectural distinction, the general effect of Delaware Avenue is
+still fine and American.
+
+My impression of this celebrated street was necessarily hurried, having
+been acquired in the course of sundry dashes down its length in motor
+cars. I recall a number of its buildings only vaguely now, but there is
+one which I admired every time I saw it, and which still clings in my
+memory both as a building and as a sermon on the enduring beauty of
+simplicity and good, old-fashioned lines--the office of Spencer Kellogg
+& Sons, at the corner of Niagara Square.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It happened that just before we left New York there was a newspaper talk
+about some rich women who had organized a movement of protest against
+the ever-increasing American tendency toward show and extravagance. We
+were, therefore, doubly interested when we heard of a similar activity
+on the part of certain fashionable women of Buffalo.
+
+Our hostess at a dinner party there was the first to mention it, but
+several other ladies added details. They had formed a few days before a
+society called the "Simplicity League," the members of which bound
+themselves to give each other moral support in their efforts to return
+to a more primitive mode of life. I cannot recall now whether the topic
+came up before or after the butler and the footman came around with
+caviar and cocktails, but I know that I had learned a lot about it from
+charming and enthusiastic ladies at either side of me before the sherry
+had come on; that, by the time the sauterne was served, I was deeply
+impressed, and that, with the roast and the Burgundy, I was prepared to
+take the field against all comers, not only in favor of simplicity, but
+in favor of anything and everything which was favored by my hostess.
+Throughout the salad, the ices, the Turkish coffee, and the
+Corona-coronas I remained her champion, while with the port--ah!
+nothing, it seems to me, recommends the old order of things quite so
+thoroughly as old port, which has in it a sermon and a song. After
+dinner the ladies told us more about their league.
+
+"We don't intend to go to any foolish extremes," said one who looked
+like the apotheosis of the Rue de la Paix. "We are only going to scale
+things down and eliminate waste. There is a lot of useless show in this
+country which only makes it hard for people who can't afford things. And
+even for those who can, it is wrong. Take the matter of dress--a dress
+can be simple without looking cheap. And it is the same with a dinner. A
+dinner can be delicious without being elaborate. Take this little dinner
+we had to-night--"
+
+"_What?_" I cried.
+
+"Yes," she nodded. "In future we are all going to give plain little
+dinners like this."
+
+"_Plain?_" I gasped.
+
+Our hostess overheard my choking cry.
+
+"Yes," she put in. "You see, the league is going to practise what it
+preaches."
+
+"But I didn't think it had begun yet! I thought this dinner was a kind
+of farewell feast--that it was--"
+
+[Illustration: I was prepared to take the field against all comers, not
+only in favor of simplicity, but in favor of anything and everything
+which was favored by my hostess]
+
+Our hostess looked grieved. The other ladies of the league gazed at me
+reproachfully.
+
+"Why!" I heard one exclaim to another, "I don't believe he noticed!"
+
+"Didn't you notice?" asked my hostess.
+
+I was cornered.
+
+"Notice?" I asked. "Notice _what_?"
+
+"That we didn't have champagne!" she said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS
+
+
+Before leaving home we were presented with a variety of gifts, ranging
+all the way from ear muffs to advice. Having some regard for the
+esthetic, we threw away the ear muffs, determining to buy ourselves fur
+caps when we should need them. But the advice we could not throw away;
+it stuck to us like a poor relation.
+
+In the parlor car, on the way from Buffalo to Cleveland, our minds got
+running on sad subjects.
+
+"We have come out to find interesting things--to have adventures," said
+my blithe companion. "Now supposing we go on and on and nothing happens.
+What will we do then? The publishers will have spent all this money for
+our traveling, and what will they get?"
+
+I told him that, in such an event, we would make up adventures.
+
+"What, for instance?" he demanded.
+
+I thought for a time. Then I said:
+
+"Here's a good scheme--we could begin now, right here in this car. You
+act like a crazy man. I will be your keeper. You run up and down the
+aisle shouting--talk wildly to these people--stamp on your hat--do
+anything you like. It will interest the passengers and give us something
+nice to write about. And you could make a picture of yourself, too."
+
+Instead of appreciating that suggestion he was annoyed with me, so I
+ventured something else.
+
+"How would it be for you to beat a policeman on the helmet?"
+
+He didn't care for that either.
+
+"Why don't you think of something for yourself to do?" he said, somewhat
+sourly.
+
+"All right," I returned. "I'm willing to do my share. I will poison you
+and get arrested for it."
+
+"If you do that," he criticized, "who will make the pictures?"
+
+I saw that he was in a humor to find fault with anything I proposed, so
+I let him ramble on. He had a regular orgy of imaginary disaster,
+running all the way from train wrecks, in which I was killed and he was
+saved only to have the bother and expense of shipping my remains home,
+to fires in which my notebooks were burned up, leaving on his hands a
+lot of superb but useless drawings.
+
+After a time he suggested that we make up a list of the things we had
+been warned of. I did not wish to do it, but, acting on the theory that
+fever must run its course, I agreed, so we took paper and pencil and
+began. It required about two hours to get everything down, beginning
+with _Aches_, _Actresses_, _Adenoids_, _Alcoholism_, _Amnesia_, _Arson_,
+etc., and running on, through the alphabet to _Zero weather_,
+_Zolaism_, and _Zymosis_.
+
+After looking over the category, my companion said:
+
+"The trouble with this list is that it doesn't present things in the
+order in which they may reasonably be expected to occur. For instance,
+you might get zymosis, or attempt to write like Zola, at almost any
+time, yet those two dangers are down at the bottom of the list. On the
+other hand, things like actresses, alcoholism, and arson seem remote. We
+must rearrange."
+
+I thought it wise to give in to him, so we set to work again. This time
+we made two lists: one of general dangers--things which might overtake
+us almost anywhere, such as scarlet fever, hardening of the arteries,
+softening of the brain, and "road shows" from the New York Winter
+Garden; another arranged geographically, according to our route. Thus,
+for example, instead of listing Elbert Hubbard under the letter "H," we
+elevated him to first place, because he lives near Buffalo, which was
+our first stop.
+
+I didn't want to put down Hubbard's name at all--I thought it would
+please him too much if he ever heard about it. I said to my companion:
+
+"We have already passed Buffalo. And, besides, there are some things
+which the instinct of self-preservation causes one to recollect without
+the aid of any list."
+
+"I know it," he returned, stubbornly, "but, in the interest of science,
+I wish this list to be complete."
+
+So we put down everything: Elbert Hubbard, Herbert Kaufman, Eva
+Tanguay, Upton Sinclair, and all.
+
+[Illustration: Chamber of Commerce representatives were with us all the
+first day and until we went to our rooms, late at night]
+
+A few selected items from our geographical list may interest the reader
+as giving him some idea of the locations of certain things we had to
+fear. For example, west of Chicago we listed _Oysters_, and north of
+Chicago _Frozen Ears_ and _Frozen Noses_--the latter two representing
+the dangers of the Minnesota winter. So our list ran on until it reached
+the point where we would cross the Great Divide, at which place the word
+"_Boosters_" was writ large.
+
+I recall now that, according to our geographical arrangement, there
+wasn't much to be afraid of until we got beyond Chicago, and that the
+first thing we looked forward to with real dread was the cold in
+Minnesota. We dreaded it more than arson, because if some one sets fire
+to your ear or your nose, you know it right away, and can send in an
+alarm; but cold is sneaky. It seems, from what they say, that you can go
+along the street, feeling perfectly well, and with no idea that anything
+is going wrong with you, until some experienced resident of the place
+touches you upon the arm and says: "Excuse me, sir, but you have dropped
+something." Then you look around, surprised, and there is your ear,
+lying on the sidewalk. But that is not the worst of it. Before you can
+thank the man, or pick your ear up and dust it off, some one will very
+likely come along and step on it. I do not think they do it purposely;
+they are simply careless about where they walk. But whether it happens
+by accident or design, whether the ear is spoiled or not, whether or
+not you be wearing your ear at the time of the occurrence--in any case
+there is something exceedingly offensive, to the average man, in the
+idea of a total stranger's walking on his ear.
+
+I mention this to point a moral. However prepared we may be, in life, we
+are always unprepared. However informed we may be, we are always
+uninformed. We gaze up at the sky, dreading to-morrow's rain, and slip
+upon to-day's banana peel. We move toward Cleveland dreading the
+Minnesota winter which is yet far off, having no thought of the
+"booster," whom we believe to be still farther off. And what happens? We
+step from the train, all innocent and trusting, and then, ah, then----!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If it be true, indeed, that the "booster" flourishes more furiously the
+farther west you find him, let me say (and I say it after having visited
+California, Oregon, and Washington) that Cleveland must be newly located
+upon the map. For, if "boosting" be a western industry, Cleveland is not
+an Ohio city, nor even a Pacific Slope city, but is an island out in the
+midst of the Pacific Ocean.
+
+Nor is this a mere opinion of my own. Upon the mastodonic brow of the
+Cleveland Chamber of Commerce there hangs an official laurel wreath. The
+New York Bureau of Municipal Research invited votes from the secretaries
+of Chambers of Commerce and similar organizations in thirty leading
+cities, as to which of these bodies had accomplished most for its city,
+industrially, commercially, etc. Cleveland won.
+
+No one who has caromed against the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce will
+wonder that Cleveland won. All other Chambers of Commerce I have met,
+sink into desuetude and insignificance when compared with that of
+Cleveland. Where others merely "boost," Cleveland "boosts" intensively.
+She can raise more bushels of statistics to the acre than other cities
+can quarts. And the more Cleveland statistics you hear, the more you
+become amazed that you do not live there. It seems reckless not to do
+so. The Cleveland Chamber of Commerce can prove this to you not merely
+with figures, but also with figures of speech.
+
+Take the matter of population. Everybody knows that Cleveland is the
+"Sixth City" in the United States, but not everybody knows that in 1850
+she was forty-third. The Chamber of Commerce told me that, but I have
+prepared some figures of my own which will, perhaps, give the reader
+some idea of Cleveland's magnitude. Cleveland is only a little smaller
+than Prague, while she has about 50,000 more people than Breslau.
+
+If that does not impress you with the city's size, listen to this:
+Cleveland is actually twice as great, in population, as either Nagoya or
+Riga! Who would have believed it? The thing seems incredible! I never
+dreamed that such a situation existed until I looked it up in the "World
+Almanac." And some day, when I have more time, I intend to look up
+Nagoya and Riga in the atlas and find out where they are.
+
+A Chamber of Commerce booklet gives me the further information that
+"Cleveland is the fifth American city in manufactures, and that she
+comes first in the manufacture of steel ships, heavy machinery, wire and
+wire nails, bolts and nuts, vapor stoves, electric carbons, malleable
+castings, and telescopes"--a list which, by the way, sounds like one of
+Lewis Carroll's compilations.
+
+The information that Cleveland is also the first city in the world in
+its record, per capita, for divorce, does not come to me from the
+Chamber of Commerce booklet--but probably the fact was not known when
+the booklet was printed.
+
+Besides being first in so many interesting fields, Cleveland is the
+second of the Great Lake cities, and is also second in "the value of its
+product of women's outer wearing apparel and fancy knit goods."
+
+It is, furthermore, "the cheapest market in the North for pig iron."
+
+There are other figures I could give (saving myself a lot of trouble, at
+the same time, because I only have to copy them from a book), but I want
+to stop and let that pig-iron statement sink into you as it sank into me
+when I first read it. I wonder if you knew it before? I am ashamed to
+admit it, but _I_ did not. I didn't consider where I could get my pig
+iron the cheapest. When I wanted pig iron I simply went out and bought
+it, at the nearest place, right in New York. That is, I bought it in
+New York unless I happened to be traveling when the craving came upon
+me. In that case I would buy a small supply wherever I happened to
+be--just enough to last me until I could get home again. I don't know
+how pig iron affects you, but with me it acts peculiarly. Sometimes I go
+along for weeks without even thinking of it; then, suddenly, I feel that
+I must have some at once--even if it is the middle of the night. Of
+course a man doesn't care what he pays for his pig iron when he feels
+like that. But in my soberer moments I now realize that it is best to be
+economical in such matters. The wisest plan is to order enough pig iron
+from Cleveland to keep you for several months, being careful to notice
+when the supply is running low, so that you can order another case.
+
+[Illustration: It is an Elizabethan building, with a heavy timbered
+front, suggesting some ancient, hospitable, London coffee house where
+wits of old were used to meet]
+
+Apropos of this let me say here, in response to many inquiries as to
+what the nature of this work of mine would be, that I intend it to be
+"useful as well as ornamental"--to quote the happy phrase, coined by
+James Montgomery Flagg. That is, I intend not only to entertain and
+instruct the reader but, where opportunity offers, to give him the
+benefit of good sound advice, such as I have just given with regard to
+the purchasing of pig iron.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MORE CLEVELAND CHARACTERISTICS
+
+
+Because I have told you so much about the Chamber of Commerce you must
+not assume that the Chamber of Commerce was with us constantly while we
+were in Cleveland, for that is not the case. True, Chamber of Commerce
+representatives were with us all the first day and until we went to our
+rooms, late at night. But at our rooms they left us, merely taking the
+precaution to lock us in. No attempt was made to assist us in undressing
+or to hear our prayers or tuck us into bed. Once in our rooms we were
+left to our own devices. We were allowed to read a little, if we wished,
+to whisper together, or even to amuse ourselves by playing with the
+fixtures in the bathroom.
+
+On the morning of the second day they came and let us out, and took us
+to see a lot of interesting and edifying sights, but by afternoon they
+had acquired sufficient confidence in us to turn us loose for a couple
+of hours, allowing us to roam about, at large, while they attended to
+their mail.
+
+We made use of the freedom thus extended to us by presenting several
+letters of introduction to Cleveland gentlemen, who took us to various
+clubs.
+
+Almost every large city in the country has one solid, dignified old
+club, occupying a solid, dignified old building on a corner near the
+busy part of town. The building is always recognizable, even to a
+stranger. It suggests a fine cuisine, an excellent wine cellar, and a
+great variety of good cigars in prime condition. In the front of such a
+club there are large windows of plate glass, back of which the passer-by
+may catch a glimpse of a trim white mustache and a silk hat. Looking at
+the outside of the building, you know that there is a big, high-ceiled
+room, at the front, dark in color and containing spacious leather
+chairs, which should (and often do) contain aristocratic gentlemen who
+have attained years of discretion and positions of importance. One feels
+cheated if, on entering, one fails to encounter a member carrying a
+malacca stick and wearing waxed mustaches, spats, and a gardenia. The
+Union Club of New York is such a club; so is the Pacific Union of San
+Francisco; so is the Chicago Club; and so, I fancy, from my glimpse of
+it, is the Union Club of Cleveland.
+
+In the larger cities there is usually another club, somewhat less formal
+in architecture, decoration, and spirit, and given over, broadly
+speaking, to the younger men--though there is often a good deal of
+duplication of membership between the first mentioned type of club and
+the second. The Tavern of Cleveland is of the second category; so is the
+Saturn Club of Buffalo, of which I spoke in a former chapter. Almost
+every good-sized city has, likewise, its university club, its athletic
+club, and its country club. University clubs vary a good deal in
+character, but athletic clubs and country clubs are in general pretty
+true to type.
+
+Besides such clubs as these, one finds, here and there, in the United
+States, a few clubs of a character more unusual. Cleveland has three
+unusual clubs: the Rowfant, a book collector's club; the Chagrin Valley
+Hunt Club, at Gates Mills, near the city, and the Hermit Club.
+
+Were it not for the fact that I detest the words "artistic" and
+"bohemian," I should apply them to the Hermit Club. It is one of the few
+clubs outside New York, Chicago, and San Francisco possessing its own
+house and made up largely of men following the arts, or interested in
+them. Like the Lambs of New York, the Hermits give shows in their
+clubhouse, but the Lambs' is a club of actors, authors, composers, stage
+managers, etc., while the Hermit Club is made up, so far as the theater
+is concerned, of amateurs--amateurs having among them sufficient talent
+to write and act their own shows, design their own costumes, paint their
+own scenery, compose their own music, and even play it, too--for there
+is an orchestra of members. I have never seen a Hermits' show, and I am
+sorry, for I have heard that they are worth seeing. Certainly their
+clubhouse is. It is an Elizabethan building, with a heavy timbered
+front, suggesting some ancient, hospitable, London coffee house where
+wits of old were used to meet. This illusion is enhanced by the
+surroundings of the club, for it stands in an alley--or perhaps I had
+better say a narrow lane--and is huddled down between the walls of
+taller buildings.
+
+The pleasant promise of the exterior is fulfilled within. The ground
+floor rooms are low and cozy, and have a pleasant "rambling" feeling--a
+step or two up here or down there. The stairway, leading to the floor
+above, is narrow, with a genial kind of narrowness that seems to say:
+"There is no one here with whom you'll mind rubbing elbows as you pass."
+Ascending, you reach the main room, which occupies the entire upper
+floor. This room is the Hermit Club. It is here that members gather and
+that the more intimate shows are given. Large, with dark panels, and
+heavy beams which spring up and lose themselves in warm shadows
+overhead, it is a room combining dignity with gracious informality. And
+let me add that, to my mind, such a combination is at once rare and
+desirable in a club building--or, for the matter of that, in a home or a
+human being. A club which is too informal is likely to seem trivial; a
+club too dignified, austere. A club should neither seem to be a joke,
+nor yet a mausoleum. If it be magnificent, it should not, at least,
+overwhelm one with its magnificence; it should not chill one with its
+grandeur, so that one lowers one's voice to a whisper and involuntarily
+removes one's hat.
+
+In some clubs a man leaves his hat upon his head or takes it off, as he
+prefers. In others custom demands that he remove it. Some men will argue
+that if you give a man his choice in that matter he feels more at home;
+others contend that if he takes his hat off he will, at all events,
+_look_ more at home, whereas, if he leaves it on he will look more as
+though he were in a hotel. These are matters of opinion. There are many
+pleasant clubs which differ on this minor point. But I do not think that
+any club may be called pleasant in which a man is inclined to take off
+his hat instinctively because of an air of grim formality which he
+encounters on entering the door. To make an Irish bull upon this
+subject, one of the nicest things that I remember of the Hermit Club is
+that I don't remember whether we wore our hats while there or not.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Chagrin Valley Hunt Club lies in a pleasant valley which acquired
+its name through the error of a pioneer (General Moses Cleveland
+himself, if I remember rightly) who, when sailing up Lake Erie, landed
+at this point, mistaking it for the site of Cleveland, farther on, and
+was hence chagrined. Here, more than a hundred years ago, the little
+village of Gates Mills was settled by men whose buildings, left behind
+them, still proclaim their New England origin. If ever I saw a
+Connecticut village outside the State of Connecticut, that village is
+Gates Mills, Ohio. Low white farmhouses, with picturesque doorways and
+small windows divided into many panes, straggle pleasantly along on
+either side of the winding country road, and there is even an old
+meeting house, with a spire such as you may see in many a New England
+hamlet.
+
+[Illustration: In this charming, homelike old building, with its
+grandfather's clock, its Windsor chairs, and its open wood fires, a
+visitor finds it hard to realize that he is in the "west"]
+
+The old Gates house, which was built in 1812 by the miller from whom the
+place took its name, is passing a mellow old age as the house of the
+Hunt Club. In this charming, homelike old building, with its
+grandfather's clock, its Windsor chairs, and its open wood fires, a
+visitor finds its hard to realize that he is actually in a portion of
+the country which is still referred to, in New York, as "the west."
+
+The Connecticut resemblance is accounted for by the fact that all this
+section of the country was in the Western Reserve, which belonged to,
+and was settled by, Connecticut. Thus travel teaches us! I knew
+practically nothing, until then, of the Western Reserve, and even less
+of hunt clubs. I had never been in a hunt club before, and my
+impressions of such institutions had been gleaned entirely from short
+stories and from prints showing rosy old rascals drinking. Probably
+because of these prints I had always thought that "horsey"
+people--particularly the "hunting set"--were generally addicted to the
+extensive (and not merely external) use of alcohol. As others may be of
+the same impression it is perhaps worth remarking that, while in the
+Hunt Club, we saw a number of persons drinking tea, and that only two
+were drinking alcoholic beverages--those two being visitors: an
+illustrator and a writer from New York.
+
+I mentioned that to the M. F. H., and told him of my earlier impression
+as to hunt-club habits.
+
+"Lots of people have that idea," he smiled, "but it is wrong. As a
+matter of fact, few hunting people are teetotalers, but those who ride
+straight are almost invariably temperate. They have to be. You can't be
+in the saddle six or eight hours at a stretch, riding across country,
+and do it on alcohol."
+
+I also learned from the M. F. H. certain interesting things regarding a
+fox's scent. Without having thought upon the subject, I had somehow
+acquired the idea that hounds got the scent from the actual tracks of
+the animal they followed. That is not so. The scent comes from the body
+of the fox and is left behind him suspended in the air. And, other
+conditions being equal, the harder your fox runs the stronger his scent
+will be. The most favorable scent for following is what is known as a
+"breast-high scent"--meaning a scent which hangs in suspension at a
+point sufficiently high to render it unnecessary for the hounds to put
+their heads down to the ground. Sometimes a scent hangs low; sometimes,
+on the other hand, it rises so that, particularly in a covert, the
+riders, seated upon their horses, can smell it, while the hounds cannot.
+
+But I think I have said enough about this kind of thing. It is a
+dangerous topic, for the terminology and etiquette of hunting are even
+more elaborate than those of golf. Probably I have made some mistake
+already; indeed, I know of one which I just escaped--I started to write
+"dogs" instead of "hounds," and that is not done. I have a horror of
+displaying my ignorance on matters of this kind. For I take a kind of
+pride--and I think most men do--in being correct about comparatively
+unimportant things. It is permissible to be wrong about important
+things, such as politics, finance, and reform, and to explain them,
+although you really know nothing about them. But with fox hunting it is
+different. There are some people who really _do_ know about that, and
+they are likely to catch you.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Two other Cleveland organizations should be mentioned.
+
+Troop A of the Ohio National Guard is known as one of the most capable
+bodies of militia in the entire country. It has been in existence for
+some forty years, and its membership has always been recruited from
+among the older and wealthier families of the city. The fame of Troop A
+has reached beyond Ohio, for under its popular title, "The Black Horse
+Troop," it has gone three times to Washington to act as escort to
+Presidents of the United States at the time of their inauguration.
+Cleveland is, furthermore, the headquarters for trotting racing. The
+Cleveland Gentlemen's Driving Club is an old and exceedingly active
+body, and its president, Mr. Harry K. Devereux, is also president of the
+National Trotting Association.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A curious and characteristic thing which we encountered in no other city
+is the Three-Cent Cult--a legacy left to the city by the late Tom
+Johnson. Cleveland's street railway system is controlled by the city
+and the fare is not five cents, but three. But that is not all. A
+municipal lighting plant is, or soon will be, in operation, with charges
+of from one to three cents per kilowatt hour. Also the city has gone
+into the dance-hall business. There, too, the usual rate is cut: fifteen
+cents will buy five dances in the municipal dance halls, instead of
+three. No one will attempt to dispute that dancing, to-day, takes
+precedence over the mere matter of eating, yet it is worth mentioning
+that the Three-Cent Cult has even found its way into the lunch room.
+Sandwiches may be purchased in Cleveland for three cents which are not
+any worse than five-cent sandwiches in other cities.
+
+Perhaps the finest thing about the Three-Cent Cult is the fact that it
+runs counter to one of the most pronounced and pitiable traits of our
+race: wastefulness. Sometimes it seems that, as a people, we take less
+pride in what we save than in what we throw away. We have a "There's
+more where that came from!" attitude of mind. A man with thousands a
+year says: "Hell! What's a hundred?" and a man with hundreds imitates
+him on a smaller scale. The humble fraction of a nickel is despised. All
+honor, then, to Cleveland--the city which teaches her people that two
+cents is worth saving, and then helps them to save it. Two points, in
+this connection, are interesting:
+
+One, that Cleveland has been trying to induce the Treasury Department to
+resume the coinage of a three-cent piece; another, that the percentage
+of depositors in savings banks in Cleveland, in proportion to the
+population, is higher than in most other cities. And, by the way, the
+savings banks pay 4 per cent.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were taken in automobiles from one end of the city to the other. Down
+by the docks we saw gigantic, strange machines, expressive of
+Cleveland's lake commerce--machines for loading and unloading ships in
+the space of a few hours. One type of machine would take a regular steel
+coal car in its enormous claws and turn that car over, emptying the load
+of coal into a ship as you might empty a cup of flour with your hand.
+Then it would set the car down again, right side up, upon the track,
+only to snatch the next one and repeat the operation.
+
+Another machine for unloading ore would send its great steel hands down
+into the vessel's hold, snatch them up filled with tons of the precious
+product of the mines, and, reaching around backward, drop the load into
+a waiting railroad car. The present Great Lakes record for loading is
+held by the steamer _Corry_, which has taken on a cargo of 10,000 tons
+of ore in twenty-five minutes. The record for unloading is held by the
+_George F. Perkins_, from which a cargo of 10,250 tons of ore was
+removed in two hours and forty-five minutes.
+
+Some of the largest steamers of the Great Lakes may be compared, in
+size, with ocean liners. A modern ore boat is a steel shell more than
+six hundred feet long, with a little space set aside at the bows for
+quarters and a little space astern for engines. The deck is a series of
+enormous hatches, so that practically the entire top of the ship may be
+removed in order to facilitate loading and unloading. As these great
+vessels (many of which are built in Cleveland, by the way) are laid up
+throughout the winter, when navigation on the Great Lakes is closed, it
+is the custom to drive them hard during the open season. Some of them
+make as many as thirty trips in the eight months of their activity, and
+an idea of the volume of their traffic may be gotten from the statement
+that "the iron-ore tonnage of the Cleveland district is greater than the
+total tonnage of exports and imports at New York Harbor." One of the
+little books about Cleveland, which they gave me, makes that statement.
+It does not sound as though it could be true, but I do not think they
+would dare print untruths about a thing like that, no matter how anxious
+they might be to "boost." However, I feel it my duty to add that the
+same books says: "Fifty per cent. of the population of the United States
+and Canada _lies_ within a radius of five hundred miles of Cleveland."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I find that when I try to recall to my mind the picture of a city, I
+think of certain streets which, for one reason or another, engraved
+themselves more deeply than other streets upon my memory. One of my
+clearest mental photographs of Cleveland is of endless streets of
+homes.
+
+Now, although I saw many houses, large and small, possessing real
+beauty--most of them along the boulevards, in the Wade Park Allotment or
+on Euclid Heights, where modern taste has had its opportunity--it is
+nevertheless true that, for some curious reason connected with the
+workings of the mind, those streets which I remember best, after some
+months of absence, are not the streets possessed of the most charm.
+
+I remember vividly, for instance, my disappointment on viewing the decay
+of Euclid Avenue, which I had heard compared with Delaware, in Buffalo,
+and which, in reality, does not compare with it at all, being rather run
+down, and lined with those architectural monstrosities of the 70's
+which, instead of mellowing into respectable antiquity, have the unhappy
+faculty of becoming more horrible with time, like old painted harridans.
+Another vivid recollection is of a sad monotony of streets, differing
+only in name, containing blocks and blocks and miles and miles of humble
+wooden homes, all very much alike in their uninteresting duplication.
+
+These memories would make my mental Cleveland picture somewhat sad, were
+it not for another recollection which dominates the picture and
+glorifies the city. This recollection, too, has to do with squalid
+thoroughfares, but in a different way.
+
+Down near the railroad station, where the "red-light district" used to
+be, there has long stood a tract of several blocks of little buildings,
+dismal and dilapidated. They are coming down. Some of them have come
+down. And there, in that place which was the home of ugliness and vice,
+there now shows the beginning of the city's Municipal Group Plan. This
+plan is one of the finest things which any city in the land has
+contemplated for its own beautification. In this country it was, at the
+time it originated, unique; and though other cities (such as Denver and
+San Francisco) are now at work on similar improvements, the Cleveland
+plan remains, I believe, the most imposing and the most complete of its
+kind.
+
+When an American city has needed some new public building it has been
+the custom, in the past, for the politicians to settle on a site, and
+cause plans to be drawn (by their cousins), and cause those plans to be
+executed (by their brothers-in-law). This may have been "practical
+politics," but it has hardly resulted in practical city improvement.
+
+No one will dispute the convenience of having public buildings "handy"
+to one another, but there may still be found, even in Cleveland, men
+whose feeling for beauty is not so highly developed as their feeling for
+finance; men who shake their heads at the mention of a group plan; who
+don't like to "see all that money wasted." I met one or two such. But I
+will venture the prophecy that, when the Cleveland plan is a little
+farther advanced, so that the eye can realize the amazing
+splendor of the thing, as it will ultimately be, there will be no one
+left in Cleveland to convert.
+
+[Illustration: Down by the docks we saw gigantic, strange machines,
+expressive of Cleveland's lake commerce--machines for loading and
+unloading ships in the space of a few hours]
+
+It is a fine and unusual thing, in itself, for an American city to be
+planning its own beauty fifty years ahead. Cleveland is almost
+un-American in that! But when the work done--yes, and before it is
+done--this single great improvement will have transformed Cleveland from
+an ordinary looking city to one of great distinction.
+
+Fancy emerging from a splendid railway station to find yourself facing,
+not the little bars and dingy buildings which so often face a station,
+but a splendid mall, two thousand feet long and six hundred wide, parked
+in the center and surrounded by fine buildings of even cornice height
+and harmonious classical design. At one side of the station will stand
+the public library; at the other the Federal building; and at the far
+extremity of the mall, the county building and the city hall.
+
+Three of these buildings are already standing. Two more are under way.
+The plan is no longer a mere plan but is already, in part, an actuality.
+
+When the transformation is complete Cleveland will not only have re-made
+herself but will have set a magnificent example to other cities. By that
+time she may have ceased to call herself "Sixth City"--for population
+changes. But if a hundred other cities follow her with group plans, and
+whether those plans be of greater magnitude or less, it must never be
+forgotten that Cleveland had the appreciation and the courage to begin
+the movement in America, not merely on paper but in stone and marble,
+and that, without regard to population, she therefore has a certain
+right, to-day, to call herself "First City."
+
+
+
+
+MICHIGAN MEANDERINGS
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DETROIT THE DYNAMIC
+
+
+Because Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit are, in effect, situated upon
+Lake Erie, and because they are cities of approximately the same size,
+and because of many other resemblances between them, they always seem to
+me like three sisters living amicably in three separate houses on the
+same block.
+
+As I personify them, Buffalo, living at the eastern end of the block, is
+the smallest sister. She has, I fear, a slight tendency to be anemic.
+Her husband, who was in the shipping business, is getting old. He has
+retired and is living in contentment in the old house, sitting all day
+on the side porch, behind the vines, with his slippers cocked up on the
+porch rail, smoking cigars and reading his newspapers in peace.
+
+Cleveland is the fat sister. She is very rich, having married into the
+Rockefeller family. She is placid, satisfied, dogmatically religious,
+and inclined to platitudes and missionary work. Her house, in the middle
+of the block, is a mansion of the seventies. It has a cupola and there
+are iron fences on the roof, as though to keep the birds from falling
+off. The lawn is decorated with a pair of iron dogs. But there are
+plans in the old house for a new one.
+
+The first two sisters have a kind of family resemblance which the third
+does not fully share. Detroit seems younger than her sisters. Indeed,
+you might almost mistake her for one of their daughters. The belle of
+the family, she is married to a young man who is making piles of money
+in the automobile business--and spending piles, too. Their house, at the
+western end of the block, is new and charming.
+
+I am half in love with Detroit. I may as well admit it, for you are sure
+to find me out. She is beautiful--not with the warm, passionate beauty
+of San Francisco, the austere mountain beauty of Denver, nor the
+strange, sophisticated, destroying beauty of New York, but with a sweet
+domestic kind of beauty, like that of a young wife, gay, strong, alert,
+enthusiastic; a twinkle in her eye, a laugh upon her lips. She has
+temperament and charm, qualities as rare, as fascinating, and as
+difficult to define in a city as in a human being.
+
+Do you ask why she is different from her sisters? I was afraid you might
+ask that. They tell a romantic story. I don't like to repeat gossip,
+but--They say that, long ago, when her mother lived upon a little farm
+by the river, there came along a dashing voyageur, from France, who
+loved her. Mind you, I vouch for nothing. It is a legend. I do not
+affirm that it is true. But--_voila_! There is Detroit. She is
+different.
+
+If you will consider these three fictitious sisters as figures in a
+cartoon--a cartoon not devoid of caricature--you will get an impression
+of my impression of three cities. My three sisters are merely symbols,
+like the figures of Uncle Sam and John Bull. A symbol is a kind of
+generalization, and if you disagree with these generalizations of mine
+(as I think you may, especially if you live in Buffalo or Cleveland),
+let me remind you that some one has said: "All generalizations are
+false--including this one." One respect in which my generalization is
+false is in picturing Detroit as young. As a matter of fact, she is the
+oldest city of the three, having been settled by the Sieur de la Mothe
+Cadillac in 1701, ninety years before the first white man built his hut
+where Buffalo now stands, and ninety-five years before the settlement of
+Cleveland. This is the fact. Yet I hold that there is about Detroit
+something which expresses ebullient youth, and that Buffalo and
+Cleveland, if they do not altogether lack the quality of youth, have it
+in a less degree.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+So far as I recall, Chicago was the first American city to adopt a
+motto, or, as they call it now, a "slogan."
+
+I remember long ago a rather crude bust of a helmeted Amazon bearing
+upon her proud chest the words: "I Will!" She was supposed to typify
+Chicago, and I rather think she did. Cleveland's slogan is the
+conservative but significant "Sixth City," but Detroit comes out with a
+youthful shriek of self-satisfaction, declaring that: "In Detroit Life
+is Worth Living!" Doesn't that claim reflect the quality of youth?
+Doesn't it remind you of the little boy who says to the other little
+boy: "My father can lick your father"? Of course it has the
+patent-medicine flavor, too; Detroit, by her "slogan," is a cure-all.
+But that is not deliberate. It is exaggeration springing from natural
+optimism and exuberance. Life is doubtless more worth living in Detroit
+than in some other cities, but I submit that, so long as Mark Twain's
+"damn human race" retains those foibles of mind, morals, and body for
+which it is so justly famous, the "slogan" of the city of Detroit
+guarantees a little bit too much.
+
+I find the same exuberance in the publications issued by the Detroit
+Board of Commerce. Having just left the Cleveland Chamber of Commerce, I
+sedulously avoided contact with the Detroit body--one can get an
+overdose of that kind of thing. But I have several books. One is a
+magazine called "The Detroiter," with the subtitle "Spokesman of
+Optimism." It is full of news of new hotels and new factories and new
+athletic clubs and all kinds of expansion. It fairly bursts from its
+covers with enthusiasm--and with business banalities about Detroit's
+"onward sweep," her "surging ahead," her "banner year," and her
+"efficiency." "Be a Booster," it advises, and no one can say that it
+does not live up to its principles. Indeed, as I look it over, I wonder
+if I have not done Detroit an injustice in giving to Cleveland the blue
+ribbon for "boosting." The Detroit Board of Commerce even goes so far in
+its "boosting" as to "boost" Detroit into seventh place among American
+cities, while the "World Almanac" (most valuable volume on the one-foot
+shelf of books I carried on my travels) places Detroit ninth.
+
+Like Cleveland, I find that Detroit is first in the production of a
+great many things. In fact, the more I read these books issued by
+commercial bodies, the more I am amazed at the varied things there are
+for cities to be first in. It is a miserable city, indeed, which is
+first in nothing at all. Detroit is first in the production of overalls,
+stoves, varnish, soda and salt products, automobile accessories, adding
+machines, pharmaceutical manufactures, aluminum castings, in
+shipbuilding on the Great Lakes and, above all, in the manufacture of
+motor cars. And, as the Board of Commerce adds significantly, "That's
+not all!"
+
+But it is enough.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The motor-car development in Detroit interested me particularly. When I
+asked in Buffalo why Detroit was "surging ahead" so rapidly in
+comparison with certain other cities, they answered, as I knew they
+would: "It's the automobile business."
+
+But when I asked why the automobile business should have settled on
+Detroit as a headquarters instead of some other city (as, for instance,
+Buffalo), they found it difficult to say. One Buffalonian informed me
+that Detroit banks had been more liberal than those of other cities in
+supporting the motor industry in its early days. This was, however,
+vigorously denied in Detroit. When I mentioned it to the president of
+one of the largest automobile concerns he laughed.
+
+"Banks don't do business that way," he declared. "The very thing banks
+do not do is to support new, untried industries. After you have proved
+that you can make both motor cars and money they'll take care of you.
+Not before. On the other hand, when the banks get confidence in any one
+kind of business they very often run to the opposite extreme. That was
+the way it used to be in the lumber business. Most of the early fortunes
+of Detroit were made in lumber. The banks got used to the lumber
+business, so that a few years ago all a man had to do was to print
+'Lumber' on his letterhead, write to the banks and get a line of credit.
+Later, when the automobile business began to boom, the same thing
+happened over again: the man whose letterhead bore the word
+'Automobiles' was taken care of." The implication was that sometimes he
+was taken care of a little bit too well.
+
+"Then why did Detroit become the automobile center?" I asked.
+
+The question proved good for an hour's discussion among certain learned
+pundits of the "trade" who were in the president's office at the time I
+asked it.
+
+[Illustration: In midstream passes a continual parade
+of freighters ... and in their swell you may see, teetering, all kinds
+of craft, from proud white yachts to canoes]
+
+First, it was concluded, several early motor "bugs" happened to live in
+or near Detroit. Henry Ford lived there. He was always experimenting
+with "horseless carriages" in the early days and being laughed at for
+it. Also, a man named Packard built a car at Warren, Ohio. But the first
+gasoline motor car to achieve what they call an "output" was the funny
+little one-cylinder Oldsmobile which steered with a tiller and had a
+curved dash like a sleigh. It is to the Olds Motor Company, which built
+that car, that a large majority of the automobile manufactories in
+Detroit trace their origin. Indeed, there are to-day no less than a
+dozen organizations, the heads of which were at some time connected with
+the original Olds Company. This fifteen-year-old forefather of the
+automobile business was originally made in Lansing, Mich., but the plant
+was moved to Detroit, where the market for labor and materials was
+better. The Packard plant was also moved there, and for the same
+reasons, plus the fact that the company was being financed by a group of
+young Detroit men.
+
+It was not, perhaps, entirely as an investment that these wealthy young
+Detroiters first became interested in the building of motor cars. That
+is to say, I do not think they would have poured money so freely into a
+scheme to manufacture something else--something less picturesque in its
+appeal to the sporting instinct and the imagination. The automobile,
+with its promise, was just the right thing to interest rich young men,
+and it did interest them, and it has made many of them richer than they
+were before.
+
+It seems to be an axiom that, if you start a new business anywhere, and
+it is successful, others will start in the same business beside you. One
+of the pundits referred me, for example, to Erie, Pa., where life is
+entirely saturated with engine and boiler ideas simply because the Erie
+City Iron Works started there and was successful. There are now sixteen
+engine and boiler companies in Erie, and all of them, I am assured, are
+there either directly or indirectly because the Erie City Iron Works is
+there. In other words, we sat in that office and had a very pleasant
+hour's talk merely to discover that there is truth in the familiar
+saying about birds of a feather.
+
+When we got that settled and the pundits began to drift away to other
+plate-glass rooms along the mile, more or less, of corridor devoted to
+officials' offices, I became interested in a little wooden box which
+stood upon the president's large flat-top desk. I was told it was a
+dictagraph. Never having seen a dictagraph before, and being something
+of a child, I wished to play with it as I used to play with typewriters
+and letter-presses in my father's office years ago. And the president of
+this many-million-dollar corporation, being a kindly man with, of
+course, absolutely nothing to do but to supply itinerant scribes with
+playthings, let me toy with the machine. Sitting at the desk, he pressed
+a key. Then, without changing his position, he spoke into the air:
+
+"Fred," he said, "there's some one here who wants to ask you a
+question."
+
+Then the little wooden box began to talk.
+
+"What does he want to ask about?" it said.
+
+That put it up to me. I had to think of something to ask. I was
+conscious of a strange, unpleasant feeling of being hurried--of having
+to reply quickly before something happened--some breaking of
+connections.
+
+I leaned toward the machine, but the president waved me back: "Just sit
+over there where you are."
+
+Then I said: "I am writing articles about Buffalo, Cleveland, and
+Detroit. How would you compare them?"
+
+"Well," replied the Fred-in-the-box, "I used to live in Cleveland. I've
+been here four years and I wouldn't want to go back."
+
+After that we paused. I thought I ought to say something more to the
+box, but I didn't know just what.
+
+"Is that all you want to know?" it asked.
+
+"Yes," I replied hurriedly. "I'm much obliged. That's all I want to
+know."
+
+Of course it really wasn't all--not by any means! But I couldn't bring
+myself to say so then, so I said the easy, obvious thing, and after that
+it was too late. Oh, how many things there are I want to know! How many
+things I think of now which I would ask an oracle when there is none to
+ask! Things about the here and the hereafter; about the human spirit;
+about practical religion, the brotherhood of man, the inequalities of
+men, evolution, reform, the enduring mysteries of space, time, eternity,
+and woman!
+
+A friend of mine--a spiritualist--once told me of a seance in which he
+thought himself in brief communication with his mother. There were a
+million things to say. But when the medium requested him to give a
+message he could only falter: "Are you all right over there?" The answer
+came: "Yes, all right." Then my friend said: "I'm so glad!" And that was
+all.
+
+"It is the feeling of awful pressure," he explained to me, "which drives
+the thoughts out of your head. That is why so many messages from the
+spirit world sound silly and inconsequential. You have the one great
+chance to communicate with them, and, because it _is_ your one great
+chance, you cannot think of anything to say." Somehow I imagine that the
+feeling must be like the one I had in talking to the dictagraph.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Among the characteristics which give Detroit her individuality is the
+survival of her oldtime aristocracy; she is one of the few
+middle-western cities possessing such a social order. As with that of
+St. Louis, this aristocracy is of French descent, the Sibleys, Campaus,
+and other old Detroit families tracing their genealogies to forefathers
+who came out to the New World under the flag of Louis XIV. The early
+habitants acquired farms, most of them with small frontages on the river
+and running back for several miles into the woods--an arrangement which
+permitted farmhouses to be built close together for protection against
+Indians. These farms, handed down for generations, form the basis of a
+number of Detroit's older family fortunes.
+
+[Illustration: The automobile has not only changed Detroit from a quiet
+old town into a rich, active city, but upon the drowsy romance of the
+old days it has superimposed the romance of modern business]
+
+To-day commerce takes up the downtown portion of the river front, but
+not far from the center of the city the shore line is still occupied by
+residences. Along Jefferson Avenue are many homes, surrounded by
+delightful lawns extending forward to the street and back to the river.
+Most of these homes have in their back yards boathouses and docks--some
+of the latter large enough to berth seagoing steam yachts, of which
+Detroit boasts a considerable number. Nor is the water front reserved
+entirely for private use. In Belle Isle, situated in the Detroit River,
+and accessible by either boat or bridge, the city possesses one of the
+most unusual and charming public parks to be seen in the entire world.
+And there are many other pleasant places near Detroit which may be
+reached by boat--among them the St. Clair Flats, famous for duck
+shooting. All these features combine to make the river life active and
+picturesque. In midstream passes a continual parade of freighters, a
+little mail boat dodging out to meet each one as it goes by. Huge
+side-wheel excursion steamers come and go, and in their swell you may
+see, teetering, all kinds of craft, from proud white yachts with shining
+brasswork and bowsprits having the expression of haughty turned-up
+noses, down through the category of schooners, barges, tugs, motor
+yachts, motor boats, sloops, small sailboats, rowboats, and canoes. You
+may even catch sight of a hydroplane swiftly skimming the surface of
+the river like some amphibious, prehistoric animal, or of that natty
+little gunboat, captured from the Spaniards at the battle of Manila Bay,
+which now serves as a training ship for the Michigan Naval Reserve.
+
+A good many of the young aristocrats of Detroit have belonged to the
+Naval Reserve, among them Mr. Truman H. Newberry, former Secretary of
+the Navy, about whom I heard an amusing story.
+
+According to this tale, as it was told me in Detroit, Mr. Newberry was
+some years ago a common seaman in the Reserve. It seems that on the
+occasion of the annual cruise of this body on the Great Lakes, a regular
+naval officer is sent out to take command of the training ship. One day,
+when common seaman Newberry was engaged in the maritime occupation of
+swabbing down the decks abaft the bridge, a large yacht passed
+majestically by.
+
+"My man," said the regular naval officer on the bridge to common seaman
+Newberry below, "do you know what yacht that is?"
+
+Newberry saluted. "The _Truant_, sir," he said respectfully, and resumed
+his work.
+
+"Who owns her?" asked the officer.
+
+Again Newberry straightened and saluted.
+
+"I do, sir," he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+AUTOMOBILES AND ART
+
+
+Within the last few years there has come to Detroit a new life. The vast
+growth of the city, owing to the development of the automobile industry,
+has brought in many new, active, able business men and their families,
+whom the old Detroiters have dubbed the "Gasoline Aristocracy." Thus
+there are in Detroit two fairly distinct social groups--the Grosse
+Pointe group, of which the old families form the nucleus, and the North
+Woodward group, largely made up of newcomers.
+
+The automobile has not only changed Detroit from a quiet old town into a
+rich, active city, but upon the drowsy romance of the old days it has
+superimposed a new kind of romance--the romance of modern business.
+Fiction in its wildest flights hardly rivals the true stories of certain
+motor moguls of Detroit. Every one can tell you these stories. If you
+are a novelist all you have to do is go and get them. But, aside from
+stories which are true, there have developed, in connection with the
+automobile business, certain fictions more or less picturesque in
+character. One of these, which has been widely circulated, is that "90
+per cent. of the automobile business of Detroit is done in the bar of
+the Pontchartrain Hotel." The big men of the business resent that yarn.
+And, of course, it is preposterously false. Neither 90 per cent. nor 10
+per cent. nor any appreciable per cent. of the automobile business is
+done there. Indeed, you hardly ever see a really important
+representative of the business in that place. Such men are not given to
+hanging around bars.
+
+I do not wish the reader to infer that I hung around the bar myself in
+order to ascertain this fact. Not at all. I had heard the story and was
+apprised of its untruth by the president of one of the large motor car
+companies who was generously showing me about. As we bowled along one of
+the wide streets which passes through that open place at the center of
+the city called the Campus Martius, I was struck, as any visitor must
+be, by the spectacle of hundreds upon hundreds of automobiles parked,
+nose to the curb, tail to the street, in solid rows.
+
+"You could tell that this was an automobile city," I remarked.
+
+"Do you know why you see so many of them?" he asked with a smile.
+
+I said I supposed it was because there were so many automobiles owned in
+Detroit.
+
+"No," he explained. "In other cities with as many and more cars you will
+not see this kind of thing. They don't permit it. But our wide streets
+lend themselves to it, and our Chief of Police, who believes in the
+automobile business as much as any of the rest of us, also lends
+himself to it. He lets us leave our cars about the streets because he
+thinks it a good advertisement for the town."
+
+As he spoke he was forced to draw up at a crossing to let a funeral
+pass. It was an automobile funeral. The hearse, black and terrible
+as only a hearse can be, was going at a modest pace for a motor,
+but an exceedingly rapid pace for a hearse. If I am any judge of
+speed, the departed was being wafted to his final resting place at
+the somewhat sprightly clip of twelve or fifteen miles an hour.
+Behind the hearse trailed limousines and touring cars. Two humble
+taxicabs brought up the rear. There was a grim ridiculousness
+about the procession's progress--pleasure cars throttled down,
+trying to look solemn--chauffeurs continually throwing out their
+clutches in a commendable effort to keep a respectful rate of speed.
+
+Is there any other thing in the world which epitomizes our times as does
+an automobile funeral? Yesterday such a thing would have been deemed
+indecorous; to-day it is not only decorous, but rather chic, provided
+that the pace be slow; to-morrow--what will it be then? Will hearses go
+shooting through the streets at forty miles an hour? Will mourners
+scorch behind, their horns shrieking signals to the driver of the hearse
+to get out of the road and let the swiftest pass ahead, where there
+isn't all that dust? I am afraid a time is close at hand when, if
+hearses are to maintain that position in the funeral cortege to which
+convention has in the past assigned them, they will have to hold it by
+sheer force of superior horsepower!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Detroit is a young man's town. I do not think the stand-pat, sit-tight,
+go-easy kind of business man exists there. The wheel of commerce has
+wire spokes and rubber tires, and there is no drag upon the brake band.
+Youth is at the steering wheel--both figuratively and literally. The
+heads of great Detroit industries drive their own cars; and if the fact
+seems unimportant, consider: do the leading men of your city drive
+theirs? Or are they driven by chauffeurs? Have they, in other words,
+reached a time of life and a frame of mind which prohibit their taking
+the wheel because it is not safe for them to do so, or worse yet,
+because it is not dignified? Have they that energy which replaces
+worn-out tires--and methods--and ideas?
+
+I have said that the president of a large automobile company showed me
+about Detroit. I don't know what his age is, but he is under
+thirty-five. I don't know what his fortune is, but he is suspected of a
+million, and whatever he may have, he has made himself. I hope he is a
+millionaire, for there is in the entire world only one other man who, I
+feel absolutely certain, deserves a million dollars more than he
+does--and a native modesty prevents my mentioning this other's name.
+
+Looking at my friend, the president, I am always struck with fresh
+amazement. I want to say to him: "You can't be the president of that
+great big company! I know you sit in the president's office, but--look
+at your hair; it isn't even turning gray! I refuse to believe that you
+are president until you show me your ticket, or your diploma, or
+whatever it is that a president has!"
+
+Becoming curious about his exact age, I took up my "Who's Who in
+America" one evening ("Who's Who" is another valued volume on my
+one-foot shelf) with a view to finding out. But all I did find out was
+that his name is not contained therein. That struck me as surprising. I
+looked up the heads of half a dozen other enormous automobile
+companies--men of importance, interest, reputation. Of these I
+discovered the name of but one, and that one was not (as I should have
+rather expected it to be) Henry Ford. (There is a Henry Ford in my
+"Who's Who," but he is a professor at Princeton and writes for the
+_Atlantic Monthly_!)[1]
+
+Now whether this is so because of the newness of the automobile
+business, or because "Who's Who" turns up its nose at "trade," in
+contradistinction to the professions and the arts, I cannot say.
+Obviously, the compilation of such a work involves tremendous
+difficulties, and I have always respected the volume for the ability
+with which it overcomes them; but when a Detroit dentist (who invented,
+as I recollect, some new kind of filling) is included in "Who's Who,"
+and when almost every minor poet who squeaks is in it, and almost every
+illustrator who makes candy-looking girls for magazine covers, and
+almost every writer--then it seems to me time to include, as well, the
+names of men who are in charge of that industry which is not only the
+greatest in Detroit, but which, more than any industry since the
+inception of the telephone, has transformed our life.
+
+The fact of the matter is, of course, that writers, in particular, are
+taken too seriously, not merely by "Who's Who" but by all kinds of
+publications--especially newspapers. Only opera singers and actors can
+vie with writers in the amount of undeserved publicity which they
+receive. If I omit professional baseball players it is by intention;
+for, as a fan might say, they have to "deliver the goods."
+
+[Footnote 1: "Who's Who" for 1913-1914. The more recent volume, which
+has come out since, contains a biographical sketch of Mr. Henry Ford of
+Detroit.]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Baedeker's United States, a third volume in the condensed library I
+carried in my trunk, sets forth (in small type!) the following: "The
+finest private art gallery in Detroit is that of Mr. Charles L. Freer.
+The gallery contains the largest group of works by Whistler in existence
+and good examples of Tryon, Dewing, and Abbott Thayer as well as many
+Oriental paintings and potteries."
+
+But in the case of the Detroit Museum of Art, Baedeker bursts into
+black-faced type, and even adds an asterisk, his mark of special
+commendation. Also a considerable reference is made to various
+collections contained by the museum: the Scripps collection of old
+masters, the Stearns collection of Oriental curiosities, a painting by
+Rubens, drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo, and a great many works
+attributed to ancient Italian and Dutch masters. "The museum also
+contains," says Baedeker, "modern paintings by Gari Melchers, Munkacsy,
+Tryon, F. D. Millet, and others."
+
+I have quoted Baedeker as above, because it reveals the bald fact with
+regard to art in Detroit; also because it reveals the even balder fact
+that our blessed old friend Baedeker, who has helped us all so much,
+can, when he cuts loose on art, make himself exquisitely ridiculous.
+
+The truth is, of course, that Mr. Freer's gallery is not merely the
+"finest private gallery in Detroit"; not merely the finest gallery of
+any kind in Detroit; but that it is one of the exceedingly important
+collections of the world, just as Mr. Freer is one of the world's
+exceedingly important authorities on art. Indeed, any town which
+contains Mr. Freer--even if he is only stopping overnight in a
+hotel--becomes by grace of his presence an important art center for the
+time being. His mere presence is sufficient. For in Mr. Freer's head
+there is more art than is contained in many a museum. He was the man
+whom, above all others in Detroit, we wished to see. (And that is no
+disparagement of Henry Ford.)
+
+Once in a long, long time it is given to the average human being to make
+contact for a brief space with some other human being far above the
+average--a man who knows one thing supremely well. I have met six such
+men: a surgeon, a musician, an author, an actor, a painter, and Mr.
+Charles L. Freer.
+
+I do not know much of Mr. Freer's history. He was not born in Detroit,
+though it was there that he made the fortune which enabled him to retire
+from business. It is surprising enough to hear of an American business
+man willing to retire in the prime of life. You expect that in Europe,
+not here. And it is still more surprising when that American business
+man begins to devote to art the same energy which made him a success
+financially. Few would want to do that; fewer could. By the time the
+average successful man has wrung from the world a few hundred thousand
+dollars, he is fit for nothing else. He has become a wringer and must
+remain one always.
+
+Of course rich men collect pictures. I'm not denying that. But they do
+it, generally, for the same reason they collect butlers and
+footmen--because tradition says it is the proper thing to do. And I have
+observed in the course of my meanderings that they are almost invariably
+better judges of butlers than of paintings. That is because their
+butlers are really and truly more important to them--excepting as their
+paintings have financial value. Still, if the world is full of so-called
+art collectors who don't know what they're doing, let us not think of
+them too harshly, for there are also painters who do not know what they
+are doing, and it is necessary that some one should support them.
+Otherwise they would starve, and a bad painter should not have to do
+that--starvation being an honor reserved by tradition for the truly
+great.
+
+Very keenly I feel the futility of an attempt to tell of Mr. Freer in a
+few paragraphs. He should be dealt with as Mark Twain was dealt with by
+that prince of biographers, Albert Bigelow Paine; some one should live
+with him through the remainder of his life--always sympathetic and
+appreciative, always ready to draw him out, always with a notebook. It
+should be some one just like Paine, and as there isn't some one just
+like Paine, it should be Paine himself.
+
+Probably as a development of his original interest in Whistler, Mr.
+Freer has, of late years, devoted himself almost entirely to ancient
+Oriental art--sculptures, paintings, ceramics, bronzes, textiles,
+lacquers and jades. The very rumor that in some little town in the
+interior of China was an old vase finer than any other known vase of the
+kind, has been enough to set him traveling. Many of his greatest
+treasures he has unearthed, bargained for and acquired at first hand, in
+remote parts of the globe. He bearded Whistler in his den--that is a
+story by itself. He purchased Whistler's famous Peacock Room, brought
+it to this country and set it up in his own house. He traveled on
+elephant-back through the jungles of India and Java in search of buried
+temples; to Egypt for Biblical manuscripts and potteries, and to the
+nearer East, years ago, in quest of the now famous "lustered glazes." He
+made many trips to Japan, in early days, to study, in ancient temples
+and private collections, the fine arts of China, Corea and Japan, and
+was the first American student to visit the rock-hewn caves of central
+China, with their thousands of specimens of early sculpture--sculpture
+ranking, Mr. Freer says, with the best sculpture of the world.
+
+The photographs and rubbings of these objects made under Mr. Freer's
+personal supervision have greatly aided students, all over the globe.
+Every important public library in this country and abroad has been
+presented by Mr. Freer with fac-similes of the Biblical manuscripts
+discovered by him in Egypt about seven years ago, so far as these have
+been published. The original manuscripts will ultimately go to the
+National Gallery, at Washington.
+
+Mr. Freer's later life has been one long treasure hunt. Now he will be
+pursuing a pair of mysterious porcelains around the earth, catching up
+with them in China, losing them, finding them again in Japan, or in New
+York, or Paris; now discovering in some unheard-of Chinese town a
+venerable masterpiece, painted on silk, which has been rolled into a
+ball for a child's plaything. The placid pleasures of conventional
+collecting, through the dealers, is not the thing that Mr. Freer loves.
+He loves the chase.
+
+You should see him handle his ceramics. You should hear him talk of
+them! He _knows_. And though you do not know, you know he knows. More,
+he is willing to explain. For, though his intolerance is great, it is
+not directed so much at honest ignorance as against meretricious art.
+
+The names of ancient Chinese painters, of emperors who practised art
+centuries ago, of dynasties covering thousands of years, of Biblical
+periods, flow kindly from his lips:
+
+     "This dish is Grecian. It was made five hundred years before the
+     birth of Christ. This is a Chinese marble, but you see it has a
+     Persian scroll in high relief. And this bronze urn: it is perhaps
+     the oldest piece I have--about four thousand years--it is Chinese.
+     But do you see this border on it? Perfect Greek! Where did the
+     Chinese get that? Art is universal. We may call an object Greek, or
+     Roman, or Assyrian, or Chinese, or Japanese, but as we begin to
+     understand, we find that other races had the same thing--identical
+     forms and designs. Take, for example, this painting of Whistler's,
+     'The Gold Screen.' You see he uses the Tosa design. The Tosa was
+     used in Japan in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and down to
+     about twenty years ago. But there wasn't a single example of it in
+     Europe in 1864, when Whistler painted 'The Gold Screen'; and
+     Whistler had not been to the Orient. Then, where did he get the
+     Tosa design? He invented
+     it. It came to him because he was a great artist, and art is
+     universal."
+
+It was like that--the spirit of it. And you must imagine the words
+spoken with measured distinctness in a deep, resonant voice, by a man
+with whom art is a religion and the pursuit of it a passion. He has a
+nature full of fire. At the mention of the name of the late J. P.
+Morgan, of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or of certain Chinese
+collectors and painters of the distant past, a sort of holy flame of
+admiration rose and kindled in him. His contempt is also fire. A minor
+eruption occurred when the automobile industry was spoken of; a Vesuvian
+flare which reddened the sky and left the commercialism of the city in
+smoking ruins. But it was not until I chanced to mention the Detroit
+Museum of Art--an institution of which Mr. Freer strongly
+disapproves--that the great outburst came. His wrath was like an
+overpowering revolt of nature. A whirlwind of tempestuous fire mounted
+to the heavens and the museum emerged a clinker.
+
+He went to our heads. We four, who saw and heard him, left Mr. Freer's
+house drunk with the esthetic. Even the flooding knowledge of our own
+barbarian ignorance was not enough to sober us. Some of the flame had
+gotten into us. It was like old brandy. We waved our arms and cried out
+about art. For there is in a truly big human being--especially in one
+old enough to have seemed to gain perspective on the universe--some
+quality which touches something in us that nothing else can ever reach.
+It is something which is not admiration only, nor vague longing to
+emulate, nor a quickened comprehension of the immensity of things;
+something emotional and spiritual and strange and indescribable which
+seems to set our souls to singing.
+
+The Freer collection will go, ultimately, to the Smithsonian Institution
+(the National Gallery) in Washington, a fact which is the cause of deep
+regret to many persons in Detroit, more especially since the City Plan
+and Improvement Commission has completed arrangements for a Center of
+Arts and Letters--a fine group plan which will assemble and give
+suitable setting to a new Museum of Art, Public Library, and other
+buildings of like nature, including a School of Design and an Orchestra
+Hall. The site for the new gallery of art was purchased with funds
+supplied by public-spirited citizens, and the city has given a million
+dollars toward the erection of the building. Plans for the library have
+been drawn by Cass Gilbert.
+
+It seems possible that, had the new art museum been started sooner, and
+with some guarantee of competent management, Mr. Freer might have
+considered it as an ultimate repository for his treasures. But now it is
+too late. That the present art museum--the old one--was not to be
+considered by him, is perfectly obvious. Inside and out it is unworthy.
+It looks as much like an old waterworks as the new waterworks out on
+Jefferson Avenue looks like a museum. Its foyer contains some
+sculptured busts, forming the most amazing group I have ever seen. The
+group represents, I take it, prominent citizens of Detroit--among them,
+according to my recollection, the following: Hermes, Augustus Caesar, Mr.
+Bela Hubbard, Septimus Severus, the Hon. T. W. Palmer, Mr. Frederick
+Stearns, Apollo, Demosthenes, and the Hon. H. P. Lillibridge.
+
+I do not want to put things into people's heads, but--the old museum is
+not fire-proof. God speed the new one!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MAECENAS OF THE MOTOR
+
+
+The great trouble with Detroit, from my point of view, is that there is
+too much which should be mentioned: Grosse Pointe with its rich setting
+and rich homes; the fine new railroad station; the "Cabbage Patch"; the
+"Indian Village" (so called because the streets bear Indian names) with
+its examples of modest, pleasing, domestic architecture. Then there are
+the boulevards, the fine Wayne County roads, the clubs--the Country
+Club, the Yacht Club, the Boat Club, the Detroit Club, the University
+Club, all with certain individuality. And there is the unique little
+Yondatega Club of which Theodore Roosevelt said: "It is beyond all doubt
+the best club in the country."
+
+Also there is Henry Ford.
+
+I suppose there is no individual having to do with manufacturing of any
+kind whose name is at present more familiar to the world. But in all
+this ocean of publicity which has resulted from Mr. Ford's development
+of a reliable, cheap car, from the stupefying growth of his business and
+his fortune, and more recently from his sudden distribution among his
+working people of ten million dollars of profits from his business--in
+all this publicity I have seen nothing that gave me a clear idea of
+Henry Ford himself. I wanted to see him--to assure myself that he was
+not some fabulous being out of a Detroit saga. I wanted to know what
+kind of man he was to look at and to listen to.
+
+The Ford plant is far, far out on Woodward Avenue. It is so gigantic
+that there is no use wasting words in trying to express its vastness; so
+full of people, all of them working for Ford, that a thousand or two
+more or less would make no difference in the looks of things. And among
+all those people there was just one man I really wanted to see, and just
+one man I really wanted not to see. I wanted to see Henry Ford and I
+wanted not to see a man named Liebold, because, they say, if you see
+Liebold first you never do see Ford. That is what Liebold is for. He is
+the man whose business in life it is to know where Henry Ford _isn't_.
+
+To get into Mr. Ford's presence is an undertaking. It is not easy even
+to find out whether he is there. Liebold is so zealous in his protection
+that he even protects Mr. Ford from his own employees. Thus, when the
+young official who had my companion and me in charge, received word over
+the office telephone that Mr. Ford was not in the building, he didn't
+believe it. He went on a quiet scouting expedition of his own before he
+was convinced. Presently he returned to the office in which he had
+deposited us.
+
+"No; he really isn't here just now," he said. "He'll be in presently.
+Come on; I'll take you through the plant."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The machine shop is one room, with a glass roof, covering an area of
+something less than thirty acres. It is simply unbelievable in its size,
+its noise and its ghastly furious activity. It was peopled when we were
+there by five thousand men--the day shift in that one shop alone. (The
+total force of workmen was something like three times that number.)
+
+Of course there was order in that place, of course there was
+system--relentless system--terrible "efficiency"--but to my mind,
+unaccustomed to such things, the whole room, with its interminable
+aisles, its whirling shafts and wheels, its forest of roof-supporting
+posts and flapping, flying, leather belting, its endless rows of
+writhing machinery, its shrieking, hammering, and clatter, its smell of
+oil, its autumn haze of smoke, its savage-looking foreign population--to
+my mind it expressed but one thing, and that thing was delirium.
+
+Fancy a jungle of wheels and belts and weird iron forms--of men,
+machinery and movement--add to it every kind of sound you can imagine:
+the sound of a million squirrels chirking, a million monkeys quarreling,
+a million lions roaring, a million pigs dying, a million elephants
+smashing through a forest of sheet iron, a million boys whistling on
+their fingers, a million others coughing with the whooping cough, a
+million sinners groaning as they are dragged to hell--imagine all of
+this happening at the very edge of Niagara Falls, with the everlasting
+roar of the cataract as a perpetual background, and you may acquire a
+vague conception of that place.
+
+Fancy all this riot going on at once; then imagine the effect of its
+suddenly ceasing. For that is what it did. The wheels slowed down and
+became still. The belts stopped flapping. The machines lay dead. The
+noise faded to a murmur; then to utter silence. Our ears rang with the
+quiet. The aisles all at once were full of men in overalls, each with a
+paper package or a box. Some of them walked swiftly toward the exits.
+Others settled down on piles of automobile parts, or the bases of
+machines, to eat, like grimy soldiers on a battlefield. It was the lull
+of noon.
+
+I was glad to leave the machine shop. It dazed me. I should have
+liked to leave it some time before I actually did, but the agreeable
+young enthusiast who was conducting us delighted in explaining
+things--shouting the explanations in our ears. Half of them I could not
+hear; the other half I could not comprehend. Here and there I recognized
+familiar automobile parts--great heaps of them--cylinder castings, crank
+cases, axles. Then as things began to get a little bit coherent, along
+would come a train of cars hanging insanely from a single overhead rail,
+the man in the cab tooting his shrill whistle; whereupon I would
+promptly retire into mental fog once more, losing all sense of what
+things meant, feeling that I was not in any factory, but in a
+Gargantuan lunatic asylum where fifteen thousand raving, tearing maniacs
+had been given full authority to go ahead and do their damnedest.
+
+In that entire factory there was for me but one completely lucid spot.
+That was the place where cars were being assembled. There I perceived
+the system. No sooner had axle, frame, and wheels been joined together
+than the skeleton thus formed was attached, by means of a short wooden
+coupling, to the rear end of a long train of embryonic automobiles,
+which was kept moving slowly forward toward a far-distant door. Beside
+this train of chassis stood a row of men, and as each succeeding chassis
+came abreast of him, each man did something to it, bringing it just a
+little further toward completion. We walked ahead beside the row of
+moving partially-built cars, and each car we passed was a little nearer
+to its finished state than was the one behind it. Just inside the door
+we paused and watched them come successively into first place in the
+line. As they moved up, they were uncoupled. Gasoline was fed into them
+from one pipe, oil from another, water from still another.
+
+Then as a man leaped to the driver's seat, a machine situated in the
+floor spun the back wheels around, causing the motor to start; whereupon
+the little Ford moved out into the wide, wide world, a completed thing,
+propelled by its own power.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a glass shed of the size of a small exposition building the members
+of the Ford staff park their little cars. It was in this shed that we
+discovered Mr. Ford. He had just driven in (in a Ford!) and was standing
+beside it--the god out of the machine.
+
+"Nine o'clock to-morrow morning," he said to me in reply to my request
+for an appointment.
+
+I may have shuddered slightly. I know that my companion shuddered, and
+that, for one brief instant, I felt a strong desire to intimate to Mr.
+Ford that ten o'clock would suit me better. But I restrained myself.
+
+Inwardly I argued thus: "I am in the presence of an amazing man--a
+prince of industry--the Maecenas of the motor car. Here is a man who,
+they say, makes a million dollars a month, even in a short month like
+February. Probably he makes a million and a quarter in the
+thirty-one-day months when he has time to get into the spirit of the
+thing. I wish to pay a beautiful tribute to this man, not because he has
+more money than I have--I don't admit that he has--but because he
+conserves his money better than I conserve mine. It is for that that I
+take off my hat to him, even if I have to get up and dress and be away
+out here on Woodward Avenue by 9 A. M. to do it."
+
+Furthermore, I thought to myself that Mr. Ford was the kind of business
+man you read about in novels; one who, when he says "nine," doesn't mean
+five minutes after nine, but nine sharp. If you aren't there your chance
+is gone. You are a ruined man.
+
+[Illustration: Of course there was order in that place, of course there
+was system--relentless system--terrible "efficiency"--but to my mind it
+expressed but one thing, and that thing was delirium]
+
+"Very well," I said, trying to speak in a natural tone, "we will be on
+hand at nine."
+
+Then he went into the building, and my companion and I debated long as
+to how the feat should be accomplished. He favored sitting up all night
+in order to be safe about it, but we compromised at last on sitting up
+only a little more than half the night.
+
+The cold, dismal dawn of the day following found us shaved and dressed.
+We went out to the factory. It was a long, chilly, expensive, silent
+taxi ride. At five minutes before nine we were there. The factory was
+there. The clerks were there. Fourteen thousand one hundred and
+eighty-seven workmen were there--those workmen who divided the ten
+millions--everything and every one was there with a single exception.
+And that exception was Mr. Henry Ford.
+
+True, he did come at last. True, he talked with us. But he was not there
+at nine o'clock, nor yet at ten. Nor do I blame him. For if I were in
+the place of Mr. Henry Ford, there would be just one man whom I should
+meet at nine o'clock, and that man would be Meadows, my faithful valet.
+
+Apropos of that, it occurs to me that there is one point of similarity
+between Mr. Ford and myself: neither of us has a valet just at present.
+Still, on thinking it over, we aren't so very much alike, after all, for
+there is one of us--I shan't say which--who hopes to have a valet some
+day.
+
+Mr. Ford's office is a room somewhat smaller than the machine shop. It
+is situated in one corner of the administration building, and I am told
+that there is a private entrance, making it unnecessary for Mr. Ford to
+run the gantlet of the main doorway and waiting room, where there are
+almost always persons waiting to ask him for a present of a million or
+so in money; or, if not that, for four or five thousand dollars' worth
+of time--for if Mr. Ford makes what they say, and doesn't work overtime,
+his hour is worth about four thousand five hundred dollars.
+
+He wasn't in the office when we entered. That gave us time to look
+about. There was a large flat-top desk. The floor was covered with an
+enormous, costly Oriental rug. At one end of the room, in a glass case,
+was a tiny and very perfect model of a Ford car. On the walls were four
+photographs: one of Mr. James Couzens, vice-president and treasurer of
+the Ford Company; another, a life-size head of "_Your friend, John
+Wanamaker_," and two of Thomas A. Edison. Under one of the latter, in
+the handwriting of the inventor--handwriting which, oddly enough,
+resembles nothing so much as neatly bent wire--was this inscription:
+
+     _To Henry Ford, one of a group of men who have helped to make U. S.
+     A. the most progressive nation in the world._
+
+     _Thomas A. Edison._
+
+Presently Mr. Ford came in--a lean man, of good height, wearing a
+rather shabby brown suit. Without being powerfully built, Mr. Ford looks
+sinewy, wiry. His gait is loose-jointed--almost boyish. His manner, too,
+has something boyish about it. I got the feeling that he was a little
+bit embarrassed at being interviewed. That made me sorry for him--I had
+been interviewed, myself, the day before. When he sat he hunched down in
+his chair, resting on the small of his back, with his legs crossed and
+propped upon a large wooden waste-basket--the attitude of a lanky boy.
+And, despite his gray hair and the netted wrinkles about his eyes, his
+face is comparatively youthful, too. His mouth is wide and determined,
+and it is capable of an exceedingly dry grin, in which the eyes
+collaborate. They are fine, keen eyes, set high under the brows, wide
+apart, and they seem to express shrewdness, kindliness, humor, and a
+distinct wistfulness. Also, like every other item in Mr. Ford's physical
+make-up, they indicate a high degree of honesty. There never was a man
+more genuine than Mr. Ford. He hasn't the faintest sign of that veneer
+so common to distinguished men, which is most eloquently described by
+the slang term "front." Nor is he, on the other hand, one of those men
+who (like so many politicians) try to simulate a simple manner. He is
+just exactly Henry Ford, no more, no less; take it or leave it. If you
+are any judge at all of character, you know immediately that Henry Ford
+is a man whom you can trust. I would trust him with anything. He didn't
+ask me to, but I would. I would trust him with all my money. And,
+considering that I say that, I think he ought to be willing, in common
+courtesy, to reciprocate.
+
+He told us about the Ford business. "We've done two hundred and five
+millions of business to date," he said. "Our profits have amounted to
+about fifty-nine millions. About twenty-five per cent. has been put back
+into the business--into the plant and the branches. All the actual cash
+that was ever put in was twenty-eight thousand dollars. The rest has
+been built up out of profits. Yes--it has happened in a pretty short
+time; the big growth has come in the last six years."
+
+I asked if the rapid increase had surprised him.
+
+"Oh, in a way," he said. "Of course we couldn't be just sure what she
+was going to do. But we figured we had the right idea."
+
+"What is the idea?" I questioned.
+
+Then with deep sincerity, with the conviction of a man who states the
+very foundation of all that he believes, Mr. Ford told us his idea. His
+statement did not have the awful majesty of an utterance by Mr. Freer.
+He did not flame, although his eyes did seem to glow with his
+conviction.
+
+"It is _one model_!" he said. "That's the secret of the whole doggone
+thing!" (That is exactly what he said. I noted it immediately for
+"character.")
+
+Having revealed the "secret," Mr. Ford directed our attention to the
+little toy Ford in the glass case.
+
+"There she is," he said. "She's always the same. I tell everybody that's
+the way to make a success. Every manufacturer ought to do it. The thing
+is to find out something that everybody is after and then make that one
+thing and nothing else. Shoemakers ought to do it. They ought to get one
+kind of shoe that will suit everybody, instead of making all kinds.
+Stove men ought to do it, too. I told a stove man that just the other
+day."
+
+That, I believe, is, briefly, the business philosophy of Henry Ford.
+
+"It just amounts to specializing," he continued. "I like a good
+specialist. I like Harry Lauder--he's a great specialist. So is Edison.
+Edison has done more for people than any other living man. You can't
+look anywhere without seeing something he has invented. Edison doesn't
+care anything about money. I don't either. You've got to have money to
+use, that's all. I haven't got any job here, you know. I just go around
+and keep the fellows lined up."
+
+I don't know how I came by the idea, but I was conscious of the thought
+that Mr. Ford's money worried him. He looks somehow as though it did.
+And it must, coming in such a deluge and so suddenly. I asked if wealth
+had not compelled material changes in his mode of life.
+
+"Do you mean the way we live at home?" he asked.
+
+"Yes; that kind of thing."
+
+"Oh, that hasn't changed to any great extent," he said. "I've got a
+little house over here a ways. It's nothing very much--just comfortable.
+It's all we need. You can have the man drive you around there on your
+way back if you want. You'll see." (Later I did see; it is a very
+pleasant, very simple type of brick suburban residence.)
+
+"Do you get up early?" I ventured, having, as I have already intimated,
+my own ideas as to what I should do if I were a Henry Ford.
+
+"Well, I was up at quarter of seven this morning," he declared. "I went
+for a long ride in my car. I usually get down to the plant around
+eight-thirty or nine o'clock."
+
+Then I asked if the change had not forced him to do a deal of
+entertaining.
+
+"No," he said. "We know the same people we knew twenty years ago. They
+are our friends to-day. They come to our house. The main difference is
+that Mrs. Ford used to do the cooking. Lately we've kept a cook. Cooks
+try to give me fancy food, but I won't stand for it. They can't cook as
+well as Mrs. Ford either--none of them can."
+
+I wish you could have heard him say that! It was one of his deep
+convictions, like the "one model" idea.
+
+"What are your hobbies outside your business?" I asked him.
+
+It seemed to me that Mr. Ford looked a little doubtful about that.
+Certainly his manner, in replying, lacked that animation which you
+expect of a golfer or a yachtsman or an art collector--or, for the
+matter of that, a postage-stamp collector.
+
+"Oh, I have my farm out at Dearborn--the place where I was born," he
+replied. "I'm building a house out there--not as much of a house as they
+try to make out, though. And I'm interested in birds, too."
+
+Then, thinking of Mr. Freer, I inquired: "Do you care for art?"
+
+The answer, like all the rest, was definite enough.
+
+"I wouldn't give five cents for all the art in the world," said Mr. Ford
+without a moment's hesitation.
+
+I admired him enormously for saying that. So many people feel as he does
+in their hearts, yet would not dare to say so. So many people have the
+air of posturing before a work of art, trying to look intelligent,
+trying to "say the right thing" before the right painting--the right
+painting as prescribed by Baedeker. True, I think the man who declares
+he would not give five cents for all the art in the world thereby
+declares himself a barbarian of sorts. But a good, honest, openhearted
+barbarian is a fine creature. For one thing, there is nothing false
+about him. And there is nothing soft about him either. It is the poseur
+who is soft--soft at the very top, where Henry Ford is hard.
+
+I saw from his manner that he was becoming restless. Perhaps we had
+stayed too long. Or perhaps he was bored because I spoke about an
+abstract thing like art.
+
+I asked but one more question.
+
+"Mr. Ford," I said, "I should think that when a man is very rich he
+might hardly know, sometimes, whether people are really his friends or
+whether they are cultivating him because of his money. Isn't that so?"
+
+Mr. Ford's dry grin spread across his face. He replied with a question:
+
+"When people come after _you_ because they want to get something out of
+you, don't you get their number?"
+
+"I think I do," I answered.
+
+"Well, so do I," said Mr. Ford.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE CURIOUS CITY OF BATTLE CREEK
+
+
+It was on a chilly morning, not much after eight o'clock, that we left
+Detroit. I recall that, driving trainward, I closed the window of the
+taxicab; that the marble waiting room of the new station looked
+uncomfortably half awake, like a sleeper who has kicked the bedclothes
+off, and that the concrete platform outside was a playground for cold,
+boisterous gusts of wind.
+
+Our train had come from somewhere else. Entering the Pullman car, we
+found it in its night-time aspect. The narrow aisle, made narrower by its
+shroud of long green curtains, and by shoes and suit cases standing
+beside the berths, looked cavernous and gloomy, reminding me of a great
+rock fissure, the entrance to a cave I had once seen. Like a cave, too,
+it was cold with a musty and oppressive cold; a cold which embalmed the
+mingling smells of sleep and sleeping car--an odor as of Russia leather
+and banana peel ground into a damp pulp.
+
+Silently, gloomily, without removing our overcoats or gloves, we seated
+ourselves, gingerly, upon the bright green plush of the section nearest
+to the door, and tried to read our morning papers. Presently the train
+started. A thin, sick-looking Pullman conductor came and took our
+tickets, saying as few words as possible. A porter, in his sooty canvas
+coat, sagged miserably down the aisle. Also a waiter from the dining
+car, announcing breakfast in a cheerless tone. Breakfast! Who could
+think of breakfast in a place like that? For a long time, we sat in
+somber silence, without interest in each other or in life.
+
+To appreciate the full horror of a Pullman sleeping car it is not
+necessary to pass the night upon it; indeed, it is necessary _not_ to.
+If you have slept in the car, or tried to sleep, you arise with blunted
+faculties--the night has mercifully anesthetized you against the scenes
+and smells of morning. But if you board the car as we did, coming into
+it awake and fresh from out of doors, while it is yet asleep--then, and
+then only, do you realize its enormous ghastliness.
+
+Our first diversion--the faintest shadow of a speculative interest--came
+with a slight stirring of the curtains of the berth across the way. For,
+even in the most dismal sleeping car, there is always the remote chance,
+when those green curtains stir, that the Queen of Sheba is all radiant
+within, and that she will presently appear, like sunrise.
+
+Over our newspapers we watched, and even now and then our curiosity was
+piqued by further gentle stirrings of the curtains. And, of course, the
+longer we were forced to wait, the more hopeful we became. In a low
+voice I murmured to my companion the story of the glorious creature I
+had seen in a Pullman one morning long ago: how the curtains had stirred
+at first, even as these were stirring now; how they had at last been
+parted by a pair of rosy finger tips; how I had seen a lovely face
+emerge; how her two braids were wrapped about her classic head; how she
+had floated forth into the aisle, transforming the whole car; how she
+had wafted past me, a soft, sweet cloud of pink; how she--Then, just as
+I was getting to the interesting part of it, I stopped and caught my
+breath. The curtains were in final, violent commotion! They were parting
+at the bottom! Ah! Slowly, from between the long green folds, there
+appeared a foot. No filmy silken stocking covered it. It was a foot.
+There was an ankle, too--a small ankle. Indeed, it was so small as to be
+a misfit, for the foot was of stupendous size, and very knobby. Also it
+was cold; I knew that it was cold, just as I knew that it was attached
+to the body of a man, and that I did not wish to see the rest of him. I
+turned my head and, gazing from the window, tried to concentrate my
+thoughts upon the larger aspects of the world outside, but the picture
+of that foot remained with me, dwarfing all other things.
+
+I did not mean to look again; I was determined not to look. But at the
+sound of more activity across the way, my head was turned as by some
+outside force, and I did look, as one looks, against one's will, at some
+horror which has happened in the street.
+
+He had come out. He was sitting upon the edge of his berth, bending over
+and snorting as he fumbled for his shoes upon the floor. Having secured
+them, he pulled them on with great contortions, emitting stertorous
+sounds. Then, in all the glory of his brown balbriggan undershirt, he
+stood up in the aisle. His face was fat and heavy, his eyes half closed,
+his hair in tussled disarray. His trousers sagged dismally about his
+hips, and his suspenders dangled down behind him like two feeble and
+insensate tails. After rolling his collar, necktie, shirt, and waistcoat
+into a mournful little bundle, he produced from inner recesses a few
+unpleasant toilet articles, and made off down the car--a spectacle
+compared with which a homely woman, her face anointed with cold cream,
+her hair done in kid curlers, her robe a Canton-flannel nightgown, would
+appear alluring!
+
+Never, since then, have I heard men jeering over women as they look in
+dishabille, without wondering if those same men have ever seen
+themselves clearly in the mirrored washroom of a sleeping car.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+On the railroad journey between Detroit and Battle Creek we passed two
+towns which have attained a fame entirely disproportionate to their
+size: Ann Arbor, with about fifteen thousand inhabitants, celebrated as
+a seat of learning; and Ypsilanti, with about six thousand, celebrated
+as, so to speak, a seat of underwear.
+
+One expects an important college town to be well known, but a
+manufacturing town with but six thousand inhabitants must have done
+something in particular to have acquired national reputation. In the
+case of Ypsilanti it has been done by magazine advertising--the
+advertising of underwear. If you don't think so, look over the list of
+towns in the "World Almanac." Have you, for example, ever heard of
+Anniston, Ala.? Or Argenta, Ark.? Either town is about twice the size of
+Ypsilanti. Have you ever heard of Cranston, R. I., Butler, Pa., or
+Belleville, Ill.? Each is about as large as Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor put
+together.
+
+Then there is Battle Creek. Think of the amount of advertising that town
+has had! As Miss Daisy Buck, the lady who runs the news stand in the
+Battle Creek railroad station, said to us: "It's the best advertised
+little old town of its size in the whole United States."
+
+And now it is about to be advertised some more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+We were total strangers. We knew nothing of the place save that we had
+heard that it was full of health cranks and factories where breakfast
+foods, coffee substitutes, and kindred edibles and drinkables were made.
+How to see the town and what to see we did not know. We hesitated in the
+depot waiting room. Then fortune guided our footsteps to the station
+news stand and its genial and vivacious hostess. Yes, hostess is the
+word; Miss Buck is anything but a mere girl behind the counter. She is
+a reception committee, an information bureau, a guide, philosopher, and
+friend. Her kindly interest in the wayfarer seems to waft forth from the
+precincts of the news stand and permeate the station. All the boys know
+Miss Daisy Buck.
+
+After purchasing some stamps and post cards as a means of getting into
+conversation with her, we asked about the town.
+
+"How many people are there here?" I ventured.
+
+"Thirty-five," replied Miss Buck.
+
+"_Thirty-five?_" I repeated, astonished.
+
+Though Miss Buck was momentarily engaged in selling chewing gum (to some
+one else), she found time to give me a mildly pitying look.
+
+"Thousand," she added.
+
+The "World Almanac" gives Battle Creek but twenty-five thousand
+population. That, however, is no reproach to Miss Buck; it is, upon the
+contrary, a reproach to the cold-hearted statisticians who compiled that
+book. And had they met Miss Buck I think they would have been more
+liberal.
+
+"What is the best way for us to see the town?" I asked the lady.
+
+She indicated a man who was sitting on a station bench near by, saying:
+
+"He's a driver. He'll take you. He likes to ride around."
+
+"Thanks," I replied, gallantly. "Any friend of yours--"
+
+"Can that stuff," admonished Miss Buck in her easy, offhand manner.
+
+I canned it, and engaged the driver. His vehicle was a typical town
+hack--a mud-colored chariot, having C springs, sunken cushions, and a
+strong smell of the stable. Riding in it, I could not rid myself of the
+idea that I was being driven to a country burial, and that hence, if I
+wished to smoke, I ought to do it surreptitiously.
+
+Presently we swung into Main Street. I did not ask the name of the
+street, but I am reasonably certain that is it. There was a policeman on
+the corner. Also, a building bearing the sign "Old National Bank."
+
+Old! What a pleasant, mellow ring the word has! How fine, and
+philosophical, and prosperous, and hospitable it sounds. I stopped the
+carriage. Just out of sentiment I thought I would go in and have a check
+cashed. But they did not act hospitable at all. They refused to cash my
+check because they did not know me. Well, it was their loss! I had a
+little treat prepared for them. I meant to surprise them by making them
+realize suddenly that, in cashing the check, they were not merely
+obliging an obscure stranger but a famous literary man. I was going to
+pass the check through the window, saying modestly: "It may interest you
+to know whose check you have the honor of handling." Then they would
+read the name, and I could picture their excitement as they exclaimed
+and showed the check around the bank so that the clerks could see it.
+The only trouble I foresaw, on that score, was that probably they had
+not ever heard of me. But I was going to obviate that. I intended to
+sign the check "Rudyard Kipling." That would have given them something
+to think about!
+
+But, as I have said, the transaction never got that far.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The principal street of Battle Creek may be without amazing
+architectural beauty, but it is at least well lighted. On either curb is
+a row of "boulevard lights," the posts set fifty feet apart. They are
+good-looking posts, too, of simple, graceful design, each surmounted by
+a cluster of five white globes. This admirable system of lighting is in
+very general use throughout all parts of the country excepting the East.
+It is used in all the Michigan cities I visited. I have been told that
+it was first installed in Minneapolis, but wherever it originated, it is
+one of a long list of things the East may learn from the West.
+
+After driving about for a time we drew up. Looking out, I came to the
+conclusion that we had returned again to the railway station.
+
+It was a station, but not the same one.
+
+"This is the Grand Trunk Deepo," said the driver, opening the carriage
+door.
+
+"I don't believe we'll bother to get out," I said.
+
+But the driver wanted us to.
+
+[Illustration: Never, since then, have I heard men jeering over women as
+they look in dishabille, without wondering if those same men have ever
+seen themselves clearly in the mirrored washroom of a sleeping car]
+
+"You ought to look at it," he insisted. "It's a very pretty station."
+
+So we got out and looked at it, and were glad we did, for the driver was
+quite right. It was an unusually pretty station--a station superior to
+the other in all respects but one: it contained no Miss Daisy Buck.
+
+After some further driving, we returned to the station where she was.
+
+"I suppose we had better go to the Sanitarium for lunch?" I asked her.
+
+"Not on your life," she replied. "If you go to the 'San,' you won't feel
+like you'd had anything to eat--that is, not if you're good feeders."
+
+"Where else is there to go?" I asked.
+
+"The Tavern," she advised. "You'll get a first-class dinner there. You
+might have larger hotels in New York, but you haven't got any that's
+more homelike. At least, that's what I hear. I never was in New York
+myself, but I get the dope from the traveling men."
+
+However, not for epicurean reasons, but because of curiosity, we wished
+to try a meal at the Sanitarium. Thither we drove in the hack, passing
+on our way the office of the "Good Health Publishing Company" and a
+small building bearing the sign, "The Coffee Parlor"--which may signify
+a Battle Creek substitute for a saloon. I do not know how coffee
+drinkers are regarded in that town, but I do know that, while there, I
+got neither tea nor coffee--unless "Postum" be coffee and "Kaffir Tea"
+be tea.
+
+It was at the Sanitarium that I drank Kaffir Tea. I had it with my
+lunch. It looks like tea, and would probably taste like it, too, if they
+didn't let the Kaffirs steep so long. But they should use only fresh,
+young, tender Kaffirs; the old ones get too strong; they have too much
+bouquet. The one they used in my tea may have been slightly spoiled. I
+tasted him all afternoon.
+
+The "San" is an enormous brick building like a vast summer hotel. It has
+an office which is utterly hotel-like, too, even to the chairs,
+scattered about, and the people sitting in them. Many of the people look
+perfectly well. Indeed, I saw one young woman who looked so well that I
+couldn't take my eyes off from her while she remained in view. She was
+in the elevator when we went up to lunch. She looked at me with a
+speculative eye--a most engaging eye, it was--as though saying to
+herself: "Now there's a promising young man. I might make it interesting
+for him if he would stay here for a while. But of course he'd have to
+show me a physician's certificate stating that he was not subject to
+fits." My companion said that she looked at him a long while, too, but I
+doubt that. He was always claiming that they looked at him.
+
+The people who run the Sanitarium are Seventh-Day Adventists, and as we
+arrived on Saturday it was the Sabbath there--a rather busy day, I take
+it, from the bulletin which was printed upon the back of the dinner
+menu:
+
+            7.20 A. M. Morning Worship in the Parlor.
+    7.40 to 8.40 A. M. BREAKFAST.
+            9.45 A. M. Sabbath School in the Chapel.
+              11 A. M. Preaching Service in the Chapel.
+      12.30 to 2 P. M. DINNER.
+            3.30 P. M. Missionary talk.
+       5.30 to 6 P. M. Cashier's office open.
+       6 to 6.45 P. M. SUPPER.
+            6.45 P. M. March for guests and patients only.
+               8 P. M. In the Gymnasium. Basket Ball Game. Admission
+                       25 cents.
+
+No food to be taken from the Dining Room.
+
+The last injunction was not disobeyed by us. We ate enough to satisfy
+our curiosity, and what we did not eat we left.
+
+The menu at the Sanitarium is a curious thing. After each item are
+figures showing the proportion of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates
+contained in that article of food. Everything is weighed out exactly.
+There was no meat on the bill of fare, but substitutes were provided in
+the list of entrees: "Protose with Mayonnaise Dressing," "Nuttolene with
+Cranberry Sauce," and "Walnut Roast."
+
+Suppose you had to decide between those three which would you take?
+
+My companion took "Protose," while I elected for some reason to dally
+with the "Nuttolene." Then, neither of us liking what we got, we both
+tried "Walnut Roast." Even then we would not give up. I ordered a
+little "Malt Honey," while my companion called for a baked potato,
+saying: "I know what a _potato_ is, anyhow!"
+
+After that we had a little "Toasted Granose" and "Good Health Biscuit,"
+washed down in my case by a gulp or two of "Kaffir Tea," and in his by
+"Hot Malted Nuts." I tried to get him to take "Kaffir Tea" with me, but,
+being to leeward of my cup, he declined. As nearly as we could figure it
+out afterward, he was far ahead of me in proteins and fats, but I was
+infinitely richer in carbohydrates. In our indigestions we stood
+absolutely even.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are some very striking things about the Sanitarium. It is a great
+headquarters for Health Congresses, Race Betterment Congresses, etc.,
+and at these congresses strange theories are frequently put forth. At
+one of them, recently held, Dr. J. H. Kellogg, head of the Sanitarium,
+read a paper in which, according to newspaper reports, he advocated
+"human stock shows," with blue ribbons for the most perfectly developed
+men and women. At the same meeting a Mrs. Holcome charged that:
+"Cigarette-smoking heroes in the modern magazine are, I believe,
+inserted into the stories by the editors of publications controlled by
+the big interests."
+
+To this Mr. S. S. McClure, the publisher, replied: "I have never
+inserted cigarettes in heroes' mouths. I have taken them out lots of
+times. But generally the authors use a pipe for their heroes."
+
+[Illustration: "Can that stuff," admonished Miss Buck in her easy,
+offhand manner]
+
+There was talk, too, about "eugenic weddings." And a sensation was
+caused when a Southern college professor made a charge that graduates of
+modern women's colleges are unfitted for motherhood. The statement, it
+may be added, was vigorously denied by the heads of several leading
+women's colleges.
+
+Rather wild, some of this, it seems to me. But when people gather
+together in one place, intent on some one subject, wildness is almost
+certain to develop. One feels, in visiting the Sanitarium, that, though
+many people may be restored to health there, there is yet an air of mild
+fanaticism over all. Health fanaticism. The passionate light of the
+health hunt flashes in the stranger's eye as he looks at you and wonders
+what is wrong with you. And whatever may be wrong with you, or with him,
+you are both there to shake it off. That is your sole business in life.
+You are going to get over it, even if you have to live for weeks on
+"Nuttolene" or other products of the diet kitchen.
+
+"Nuttolene!"
+
+It is always an experience for the sophisticated palate to meet a
+brand-new taste. In "Nuttolene" my palate encountered one, and before
+dinner was over it met several more.
+
+"Nuttolene" is served in a slab, resembling, as nearly as anything I can
+think of, a good-sized piece of shoemaker's wax. In flavor it is
+confusing. Some faint taste about it hinted that it was intended to
+resemble turkey; an impression furthered by the fact that cranberry
+sauce was served on the same plate. But what it was made of I could not
+detect. It was not unpleasant to taste, nor yet did I find it
+appetizing. Rather, I should classify it in the broad category of
+uninteresting food. However, after such a statement, it is but fair to
+add that the food I find most interesting is almost always rich and
+indigestible. Perhaps, therefore, I shall be obliged to go to Battle
+Creek some day, to subsist on "Nuttolene" and kindred substances as
+penance for my gastronomic indiscretions. Better men than I have done
+that thing--men and women from all over the globe. And Battle Creek has
+benefited them. Nevertheless, I hope that I shall never have to go
+there. My feeling about the place, quite without regard to the cures
+which it effects, is much like that of my companion:
+
+At luncheon I asked him to save his menu for me, so that I might have
+the data for this article. He put it in his pocket. But he kept pulling
+it out again, every little while, throughout the afternoon, and
+suggesting that I copy it all off into my notebook.
+
+Finally I said to him:
+
+"What is the use in my copying all that stuff when you have it right
+there in print? Just keep it for me. Then, when I get to writing, I will
+take it and use what I want."
+
+"But I'd rather not keep it," he insisted.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, there might be a railroad wreck. If I'm killed I don't want this
+thing to be found on me. When they went through my clothes and ran
+across this they'd say: 'Oh, this doesn't matter. It's all right. He's
+just some poor boob that's been to Battle Creek.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When we got out of the hack at the station before leaving Battle Creek,
+I asked the hackman how the town got its name. He didn't know. So, after
+buying the tickets, I went and asked Miss Daisy Buck.
+
+"I suppose," I said, "there was some battle here, beside some creek,
+wasn't there?"
+
+But for once Miss Buck failed me.
+
+"You can search _me_," she replied. Then: "Did you lunch at the 'San'?"
+
+We admitted it.
+
+"How did you like it?"
+
+We informed her.
+
+"What did you eat--Mercerized hay?"
+
+"No; mostly Nuttolene."
+
+She sighed. Then:
+
+"What town are you making next?" she asked.
+
+"Kalamazoo," I said.
+
+"Oh, Ka'zoo, eh? What line are you gen'l'men travelling in?"
+
+"I'm a writer," I replied, "and my friend here is an artist. We're going
+around the country gathering material for a book."
+
+In answer to this statement, Miss Buck simply winked one eye as one who
+would say: "You're some little liar, ain't you?"
+
+"It's true," I said.
+
+"Oh, sure!" said Miss Buck, and let one eyelid fall again.
+
+"When the book appears," I continued, "you will find that it contains an
+interview with you."
+
+"Also a picture of you and the news stand," my companion added.
+
+Then we heard the train.
+
+Taking up our suit cases, we thanked Miss Buck for the assistance she
+had rendered us.
+
+"I'm sure you're quite welcome," she replied. "I meet all kinds
+here--including kidders."
+
+That was some months ago. No doubt Miss Buck may have forgotten us by
+now. But when she sees this--as, being a news-stand lady, I have reason
+to hope she will--I trust she may remember, and admit that truth has
+triumphed in the end.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+KALAMAZOO
+
+
+I had but one reason for visiting Kalamazoo: the name has always
+fascinated me with its zoological suggestion and even more with its
+rich, rhythmic measure. Indian names containing "K's" are almost always
+striking: Kenosha, Kewanee, Kokomo, Keokuk, Kankakee. Of these, the last
+two, having the most "K's" are most effective. Next comes Kokomo with
+two "K's." But Kalamazoo, though it has but one "K," seems to me to take
+first place among them all, phonetically, because of the finely assorted
+sound contained in its four syllables. There is a kick in its "K," a
+ring in its "L," a buzz in its "Z," and a glorious hoot in its two final
+"O's."
+
+I wish here to protest against the abbreviated title frequently bestowed
+upon the town by newspapers in Detroit and other neighboring cities.
+They call it "Ka'zoo."
+
+Ka'zoo, indeed! For shame! How can men take so fine a name and treat it
+lightly? True, it is a little long for easy handling in a headline, but
+that does not justify indignity. If headline writers cannot handle it
+conveniently they should not change the name, but rather change their
+type, or make-up. If I owned a newspaper, and there arose a question of
+giving space to this majestic name, I should cheerfully drop out a
+baseball story, or the love letters in some divorce case, or even an
+advertisement, in order to display it as it deserves to be displayed.
+
+Kalamazoo (I love to write it out!) Kalamazoo, I say, is also sometimes
+known familiarly as "Celery Town"--the growing of this crisp and
+succulent vegetable being a large local industry. Also, I was informed,
+more paper is made there than in any other city in the world. I do not
+know if that is true, I only know that if there is not more _something_
+in Kalamazoo than there is in any other city, the place is unique in my
+experience.
+
+From my own observations, made during an evening walk through the
+agreeable, tree-bordered streets of Kalamazoo, I should have said that
+it led in quite a different field. I have never been in any town where
+so many people failed to draw their window shades, or owned green
+reading lamps, or sat by those green-shaded lamps and read. I looked
+into almost every house I passed, and in all but two, I think, I saw the
+self-same picture of calm, literary domesticity.
+
+One family, living in a large and rather new-looking house on Main
+Street, did not seem to be at home. The shades were up but no one was
+sitting by the lamp. And, more, the lamp itself was different. Instead
+of a plain green shade it had a shade with pictures in the glass, and
+red bead fringe. Later I found out where the people were. They were
+playing bridge across the street. They must have been the people from
+that house, because there were two in all the other houses, whereas
+there were four in the house where bridge was being played.
+
+I stood and watched them. The woman from across the street--being the
+guest, she was in evening dress--was dummy. She was sitting back
+stiffly, her mouth pursed, her eyes staring at the cards her partner
+played. And she was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us,
+through the window): "If _I_ had played that hand, I never should have
+done it _that_ way!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Kalamazoo has a Commercial Club. What place hasn't? And the Commercial
+Club has issued a booklet. What Commercial Club hasn't? This one bears
+the somewhat fanciful title "The Lure of Kalamazoo."
+
+"The Lure of Kalamazoo" is written in that peculiarly chaste style
+characteristic of Chamber of Commerce "literature"--a style comparable
+only with that of railway folders and summer hotel booklets. It is the
+"Here-all-nature-seems-to-be-rejoicing" school. Let me present an
+extract:
+
+     Kalamazoo is peculiarly a city of homes--homes varying in cost from
+     the modest cottage of the laborer to the palatial house of the
+     wealthy manufacturer.
+
+The only place in which the man who wrote that slipped up, was in
+referring to the wealthy manufacturer's "house." Obviously the word
+called for there is "mansion." However, in justice to this man, and to
+Kalamazoo, I ought to add that the town seemed to be rather free from
+"mansions." That is one of the pleasantest things about it. It is just a
+pretty, unpretentious place. Perhaps he actually meant to say "house,"
+but I doubt it. I think he missed a trick. I think he failed to get the
+right word, just as if he had been writing about brooks, and had
+forgotten to say "purling."
+
+But if I saw no "mansions," I did see one building in Kalamazoo the
+architecture of which was distinguished. That was the building of the
+Western Michigan Normal School--a long, low structure of classical
+design, with three fine porticos.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Having a Commercial Club, Kalamazoo quite naturally has a "slogan," too.
+(A "slogan," by the way, is the war cry or gathering cry of a Highland
+clan--but that makes no difference to a Commercial Club.) It is: "In
+Kalamazoo We Do."
+
+This battle cry "did" very well up to less than a year ago; then it
+suddenly began to languish. There was a company in Kalamazoo called the
+Michigan Buggy Company, and this company had a very sour failure last
+year, their figures varying from fact to the extent of about a million
+and a half dollars. Not satisfied with dummy accounts and padded
+statements, they had, also, what was called a "velvet pay roll." And,
+when it all blew up, the whole of Michigan was shaken by the shock.
+Since that time, I am informed, the "slogan" "In Kalamazoo We Do" has
+not been in high favor.
+
+[Illustration: She was saying to herself (and, unconsciously, to us,
+through the window): "If _I_ had played that hand, I never should have
+done it _that_ way!"]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among the "lures" presented in the Commercial Club's booklet are four
+hundred and fifty-six lakes within a radius of fifty miles of the city.
+I didn't count the lakes myself. I didn't count the people either--not
+all of them.
+
+The "World Almanac" gives the population of the place as just under
+forty thousand, but some one in Kalamazoo--and I think he was a member
+of the Commercial Club--told me that fifty thousand was the correct
+figure.
+
+Now, I ask you, is it not reasonable to suppose that the Commercial
+Club, being right _in_ Kalamazoo, where it can count the people every
+day, should be more accurate in its figures than the Almanac, which is
+published in far-away New York? Errors like this on the part of the
+Almanac might be excused, once or twice, on the ground of human
+fallibility or occasional misprint, but when the Almanac keeps on
+cutting down the figures given by the Commercial Clubs and Chambers of
+Commerce of town after town, it begins to look like wilful
+misrepresentation if not actual spitework.
+
+That, to tell the truth, was the reason I walked around and looked in
+all the windows. I decided to get at the bottom of this matter--to find
+out the cause for these discrepancies, and if I caught the Almanac in
+what appeared to be a deliberate lie, to expose it, here. With this in
+view, I started to count the people myself. Unfortunately, however, I
+did not start early enough in the evening. When I had only a little more
+than half of them counted, they began to put out their lights and go
+upstairs to bed. And, oddly enough, though they leave their parlor
+shades up, they have a way of drawing those in their bedrooms. I was,
+therefore, forced to stop counting.
+
+I do not attempt to explain this Kalamazoo custom with regard to window
+shades. All I can say is that, for whatever reason they follow it, their
+custom is not metropolitan. New Yorkers do things just the other way
+around. They pull down their parlor shades, but leave their bedroom
+shades up. Any one who has lived in a New York apartment house in summer
+can testify to that. Probably it is all accounted for by the fact that
+in a relatively small city, like Kalamazoo, the census takers go around
+and count the people in the early evening, whereas in New York it is
+necessary for those who make the reckoning to work all night in order
+to--as one might say--get all the figures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+GRAND RAPIDS THE "ELECT"
+
+
+I know a man whose wife is famous for her cooking. That is a strange
+thing for a prosperous and charming woman to be famous for to-day, but
+it is true. When they wish to give their friends an especial treat, the
+wife prepares the dinner; and it _is_ a treat, from "pigs in blankets"
+to strawberry shortcake.
+
+The husband is proud of his wife's cooking, but I have often noticed,
+and not without a mild amusement, that when we praise it past a certain
+point he begins to protest that there are lots of other things that she
+can do. You might think then, if you did not understand him, that he was
+belittling her talent as a cook.
+
+"Oh, yes," he says, in what he intends to be a casual tone, "she can
+cook very well. But that's not all. She's the best mother I ever
+saw--sees right into the children, just as though she were one of them.
+She makes most of their clothes, too. And in spite of all that, she
+keeps up her playing--both piano and harp. We'll get her to play the
+harp after dinner."
+
+People are like that about the cities that they live in. They are like
+that in Detroit. They are afraid that in considering the vastness of the
+automobile industry, you'll overlook the fact that Detroit has a lot of
+other business. And in Grand Rapids they're the same; only there, of
+course, it's furniture.
+
+"Yes," they say almost with reluctance, "we do make a good deal of
+furniture, but we also have big printing plants and plaster mills, and a
+large business in automobile accessories, and the metal trades."
+
+They talked that way to me. But I kept right on asking about furniture,
+just as, when the young husband talks to me about his wife's harp
+playing, I keep right on eating shortcake. That is no reflection on her
+music (or her arms!); it is simply a tribute to her cooking.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Grand Rapids is one of those exceedingly agreeable, homelike American
+cities, which has not yet grown to the unwieldy size. It is the kind of
+city of which they say: "Every one here knows every one else"--meaning,
+of course, that members of the older and more prosperous families enjoy
+all the advantages and disadvantages of a considerable intimacy.
+
+To the visitor--especially the visitor from New York, where a close
+friend may be bedridden a month without one's knowing it--this sort of
+thing makes a strong appeal at first. You feel that these people see one
+another every day; that they know all about one another, and like one
+another in spite of that. It is nice to see them troop down to the
+station, fifteen strong, to see somebody off, and it must be nice to be
+seen off like that; it must make you feel sure that you have friends--a
+point upon which the New Yorker, in his heart, has the gravest doubts.
+
+Consider, for example, my own case. In the course of my residence in New
+York, I have lived in four different apartment houses. In only two of
+these have I had even the slightest acquaintance with any of the other
+tenants. Once I called upon some disagreeable people on the floor below
+who had complained about the noise; once I had summoned a doctor who
+lived on the ground floor. In the other two buildings I knew absolutely
+no one. I used to see occasionally, in the elevator of one building, a
+man with whom I was acquainted years ago, but he had either forgotten me
+in the interim, or he elected to do as I did; that is, to pretend he had
+forgotten. I had nothing against him; he had nothing against me. We were
+simply bored at the idea of talking with each other because we had
+nothing in common.
+
+Any New Yorker who is honest will admit to you that he has had that same
+experience. He passes people on the street--and sometimes they are
+people he has known quite well in times gone by--yet he refrains from
+bowing to them, and they refrain from bowing to him, by a sort of tacit
+understanding that bowing, even, is a bore.
+
+That is a sad sort of situation. But sadder yet is the fact that in New
+York we lose sight of so many people whom we should like to see--friends
+of whom we are genuinely fond, but whose evolutions in the whirlpool of
+the city's life are such that we don't chance to come in contact with
+them. At first we try. We paddle toward them now and then. But the very
+act of paddling is fatiguing, so by and by we give it up, and either
+never see them any more, or, running across them, once in a year or two,
+on the street or in a shop, lament at the broken intimacy, and make new
+resolves, only to see them melt away again in the flux and flow of New
+York life.
+
+I thought of all this at a Sunday evening supper party in Grand
+Rapids--a neighborhood supper party at which a dozen or more people of
+assorted ages sat around a hospitable table, arguing, explaining,
+laughing, and chaffing each other like members of one great glorious
+family. It made me want to go and live there, too. Then I began to
+wonder how long I'd really want to live there. Would I always want to?
+Or would I grow tired of that, just as I grow tired of the contrasting
+coldness of New York? In short, I wondered to myself which is the worst:
+to know your neighbors with a wonderful, terrible, all-revealing
+intimacy, or--not to know them at all. I have thought about it often,
+and still I am not sure.
+
+The Grand Rapids "Press" fearing that I might fail to notice certain
+underlying features of Grand Rapids life, printed an editorial at the
+time of my visit, in which attention was called to certain things. Said
+the "Press":
+
+     It isn't immediately revealed to the stranger that this is one of
+     the clearest-thinking communities in the country. The records of
+     the public library show the local demand for books on sociology, on
+     political economy, on the relations of labor and capital, on
+     taxation, on art, on the literature that has some chance of
+     permanency. The topics discussed in the lecture halls, in the
+     social centers, and in the Sunday gatherings, which are so
+     pronounced a feature of church life here, add to the testimony. Ida
+     M. Tarbell noticed that on her first visit. Her impression deepened
+     on her second.... Without tossing any bouquets at ourselves it can
+     be said that we are thinking some thoughts which only the elect in
+     other cities dream of thinking.
+
+I should like to make some intelligent comment on this. I feel, indeed,
+that something very ponderous, and solemn, and authoritative, and
+learned, and wise, and owlish, and erudite, ought to be said.
+
+But the trouble is that I am utterly unqualified to speak in that way. I
+am not one of the elect. If some one called me that, I would knock him
+down if I could, and kick him full of holes. That is because I think
+that the elect almost invariably elect themselves. They are intellectual
+Huertas, and as such I generally detest them. I merely print the
+"Press's" statement because I think it is interesting, sometimes, to see
+what a city thinks about itself. For my own part, I should think more of
+Grand Rapids if, instead of sitting tight and thinking these
+extraordinary thoughts, it had done more to carry out the plan it had
+for its own beautification.
+
+That is not to say that it is not a pretty city. It is. But its beauty
+is of that unconscious kind which comes from hills, and pleasant homes,
+and lawns, and trees. The kind of beauty that it lacks is conscious
+beauty, the creation of which requires the expenditure of thought,
+money, and effort. And if it does nothing else to indicate its
+intellectual and esthetic soarings, I should say that it might do well
+to discard the reading lamp in favor of the crowbar, if only for long
+enough to take the latter instrument, go down to the park, and see what
+can be done about that chimney which rises so absurdly there.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The lack of coherent municipal taste is all the more a reproach to Grand
+Rapids for the reason that taste, perhaps above all other qualities, is
+the essential characteristic of the city's leading industry.
+
+I used to have an idea that "cheap" furniture came from Grand Rapids.
+Perhaps it did. Perhaps it still does. I do not know. But I do know that
+the tour I made through the five acres, more or less, of rooms which
+make up the show house of Berkey & Gay, afforded me the best single bit
+of concrete proof I met, in all my travels, of the positive growth of
+good taste in this country.
+
+Just as the whole face of things has changed architecturally in the last
+ten or fifteen years, furnishings have also changed. The improved
+appreciation which makes people build sightly homes makes them fill
+those homes with furniture of respectable design. People are beginning
+to know about the history of furniture, to recognize the characteristics
+of the great English furniture designers and to appreciate the beauty
+which they handed down.
+
+We went through the warerooms with Mr. Gay, and as I feasted my eyes
+upon piece after piece, set after set, of Chippendale, Sheraton,
+Heppelwhite, and Adam, I asked Mr. Gay about the renaissance which is
+upon us. One thing I was particularly curious about: I wanted to know
+whether the improvement in furniture sprang from popular demand or
+whether it had been in some measure forced upon the public by the
+manufacturers.
+
+Mr. Gay told me that the change was something which originated with the
+people. "We have always wanted to make beautiful furniture," he said,
+"and we have helped all we could, but a manufacturer of furniture cannot
+force either good taste or bad taste upon those who buy. He has to offer
+them what they are willing to take, for they will not buy anything else.
+I know that, because sometimes we have tried to press matters a little.
+Now and then we have indulged ourselves to the extent of turning out
+some fine pieces, of one design or another, a little in advance of
+public appreciation, but there has never been any considerable sale for
+such things." He indicated a fine Jacobean library table of oak. "Take
+that piece for instance. We made some furniture like that twenty or
+twenty-five years ago, but could sell very little of it. People weren't
+ready for it then. Or this Adam set--as recently as five years ago we
+couldn't have hoped for anything more than a few nibbles on that kind
+of thing, but there's a big market for it now."
+
+I asked Mr. Gay if he had any theories as to what had caused the
+development in popular appreciation.
+
+"It is a great big subject," he said. "I think the magazines have done
+some of it. There have been quantities of publications on house
+furnishing. And the manufacturers' catalogues have helped, too. And as
+wealth and leisure have increased, people have had more time to give to
+the study of such things."
+
+On the train going to Chicago I fell into conversation with a man whom I
+presently discerned to be a furniture manufacturer. I don't know who he
+was but he told me about the furniture exposition which is held in Grand
+Rapids in January and July each year. There are large buildings with
+many acres of floor space which stand idle and empty all the year
+around, excepting at the time of these great shows. Last year more than
+two hundred and fifty separate manufacturers had exhibitions, a large
+number of them being manufacturers whose factories were not located in
+Grand Rapids, but who nevertheless found it profitable to ship samples
+there and rent space in the exhibition buildings in order to place their
+wares before the buyers who gather there from all over the country.
+
+Before we parted, this gentleman told me a story which, though he said
+it was an old one, I had never heard before.
+
+According to this story, there was, in Grand Rapids, a very inquisitive
+furniture manufacturer, who was always trying to find out about the
+business done by other manufacturers. When he would meet them he would
+question them in a way they found exceedingly annoying.
+
+One day, encountering a rival manufacturer upon the street, he stopped
+him and began the usual line of questions. The other answered several,
+becoming more and more irritated. But finally his inquisitor asked one
+too many.
+
+"How many men are working in your factory now?" he demanded.
+
+"Oh?" said the other, as he turned away, "about two-thirds of them."
+
+
+
+
+CHICAGO
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A MIDDLE-WESTERN MIRACLE
+
+
+Imagine a young demigod, product of a union between Rodin's "Thinker"
+and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and you will have my symbol of
+Chicago.
+
+Chicago is stupefying. It knows no rules, and I know none by which to
+judge it. It stands apart from all the cities in the world, isolated by
+its own individuality, an Olympian freak, a fable, an allegory, an
+incomprehensible phenomenon, a prodigious paradox in which youth and
+maturity, brute strength and soaring spirit, are harmoniously confused.
+
+Call Chicago mighty, monstrous, multifarious, vital, lusty, stupendous,
+indomitable, intense, unnatural, aspiring, puissant, preposterous,
+transcendent--call it what you like--throw the dictionary at it! It is
+all that you can do, except to shoot it with statistics. And even the
+statistics of Chicago are not deadly, as most statistics are.
+
+First, you must realize that Chicago stands fourth in population among
+the cities of the world, and second among those of the Western
+Hemisphere. Next you must realize that there are people still alive who
+were alive when Chicago did not exist, even as a fort in a swamp at the
+mouth of the Chicago River--the river from which, by the way, the city
+took its name, and which in turn took its own name from an Indian word
+meaning "skunk."
+
+I do not claim that there are many people still alive who were alive
+when Chicago wasn't there at all, or that such people are feeling very
+active, or that they remember much about it, for in 102 years a man
+forgets a lot of little things. Nevertheless, there _are_ living men
+older than Chicago.
+
+Just one hundred years ago Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the river, was
+being rebuilt, after a massacre by the Indians. Eighty-five years ago
+Chicago was a village of one hundred people. Sixty-five years ago this
+village had grown into a city of approximately the present size of
+Evanston--a suburb of Chicago, with less than thirty thousand people.
+Fifty-five years ago Chicago had something over one hundred thousand
+inhabitants. Forty-five years ago, at the time of the Chicago fire, the
+city was as large as Washington is now--over three hundred thousand. In
+the ten years which followed the disaster, Chicago was not only entirely
+rebuilt, and very much improved, but also it increased in population to
+half a million, or about the size of Detroit. In the next decade it
+actually doubled in size, so that, twenty-five years ago, it passed the
+million mark. Soon after that it pushed Philadelphia from second place
+among American cities. So it has gone on, until to-day it has a
+population of two million, plus a city of about the size of San
+Francisco for full measure.
+
+There are the statistics in a capsule paragraph. I hope you will feel
+better in the morning. And just to take the taste away, here's another
+item which you may like because of its curious flavor: Chicago has more
+Poles than any other city except Warsaw.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One knows in advance what a visitor from Europe will say about New York,
+just as one knows what an American humorist will say about Europe. But
+one never knows what any visitor will say about Chicago. I have heard
+people damn Chicago--"up hill and down" I was about to say, but I
+withdraw that, for the highest hill I remember in Chicago is that
+ungainly little bump, on the lake front, which is surmounted by Saint
+Gaudens' statue of General Logan.
+
+As I was saying, I have heard people rave against Chicago and about it.
+Being itself a city of extremes, it seems to draw extremes of feeling
+and expression from outsiders. For instance, Canon Hannay, who writes
+novels and plays under the name of George A. Birmingham, was quoted, at
+the time of his recent visit to this country, as saying: "In a little
+while Chicago will be a world center of literature, music, and art.
+British writers will be more anxious for her verdict than for that of
+London. The music of the future will be hammered out on the shores of
+Lake Michigan. The Paris Salon will be a second-rate affair."
+
+Remembering that the Canon is an Irishman and a humorist--which is
+tautology--we may perhaps discount his statement a little bit for
+blarney and a little more for fun. His "prophecy" about the Salon seems
+to stamp the interview with waggery, for certainly it is not hard to
+prophesy what is already true--and, as everybody ought to know by now,
+the Salon has for years been second-rate.
+
+The Chicago Art Institute has by all odds the most important art
+collection I visited upon my travels. The pictures are varied and
+interesting, and American painters are well represented. The presence in
+the institute of a good deal of that rather "tight" and "sugary"
+painting which came to Chicago at the time of the World's Fair, is to be
+regretted--a fact which is, I have no doubt, quite as well known to
+those in charge of the museum as to anybody else. But as I remarked in a
+previous chapter, most museums are hampered, in their early days, by the
+gifts of their rich friends. It takes a strong museum indeed to risk
+offending a rich man by kicking out bad paintings which he offers. Even
+the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has not always been so brave
+as to do that.
+
+"Who's Who" (which, by the way, is published in Chicago) mentions
+perhaps a score of Chicago painters and sculptors, among the former
+Lawton S. Parker and Oliver Dennett Grover, and among the latter Lorado
+Taft.
+
+There are, however, many others, not in "Who's Who," who attempt to
+paint--enough of them to give a fairly large and very mediocre
+exhibition which I saw. One thing is, however, certain: the Art
+Institute has not the deserted look of most other art museums one
+visits. It is used. This may be partly accounted for by its admirable
+location at the center of the city--a location more accessible than that
+of any other museum I think of, in the country. But whatever the reason,
+as you watch the crowds, you realize more than ever that Chicago is
+alive to everything--even to art.
+
+Years ago Chicago was musical enough to support the late Theodore Thomas
+and his orchestra--one of the most distinguished organizations of the
+kind ever assembled in this country. Thomas did great things for
+Chicago, musically. He started her, and she has kept on. Besides
+innumerable and varied concerts which occur throughout the season, the
+city is one of four in the country strong enough to support a first-rate
+grand opera company of its own.
+
+About twenty-five musicians of one sort and another are credited to
+Chicago by "Who's Who," the most distinguished of them, perhaps, being
+Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, the concert pianist. But it is the writers of
+Chicago who come out strongest in the fat red volume, among followers of
+the arts. With sinking heart I counted about seventy of these, and I
+may be merely revealing my own ignorance when I add that the names of a
+good two-thirds of them were new to me. But this is dangerous ground.
+Without further comment let me say that among the seventy I found such
+names as Robert Herrick, Henry B. Fuller, Hamlin Garland, Emerson Hough,
+Henry Kitchell Webster, Maud Radford Warren, Opie Read, and Clara Louise
+Burnham--a hatful of them which you may sort and classify according to
+your taste.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Canon Hannay said he felt at home in Chicago. So did Arnold Bennett.
+Canon Hannay said Chicago reminded him of Belfast. Arnold Bennett said
+Chicago reminded him of the "Five Towns," made famous in his novels.
+Even Baedeker breaks away from his usual nonpartizan attitude long
+enough to say with what, for Baedeker, is nothing less than an outburst
+of passion: "Great injustice is done to Chicago by those who represent
+it as wholly given over to the worship of Mammon, as it compares
+favorably with a great many American cities in the efforts it has made
+to beautify itself by the creation of parks and boulevards and in its
+encouragement of education and the liberal arts."
+
+[Illustration: Rodin's "Thinker"]
+
+Baedeker is quite right about that. He might also have added that the
+"Windy City" is not so windy as New York, and that the old legend, now
+almost forgotten, to the effect that Chicago girls have big feet is
+equally untrue. There is still some wind in Chicago; thanks to it and to
+the present mode in dress, I was able to assure myself quite definitely
+upon the size of Chicago feet. I not only saw them upon the streets; I
+saw them also at dances: twinkling, slippered feet as small as any in
+the land; and, again owing to the present mode, I saw not only pretty
+feet, but also--However, I am digressing. That is enough about feet. I
+fear I have already let them run away with me.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+A friend of mine who visited Chicago for the first time, a year ago,
+came back appreciative of her wonders, but declaring her provincial.
+
+"Why do you say provincial?" I asked.
+
+"Because you can't pick up a taxi in the street," he said.
+
+And it is true. I was chagrined at his discovery--not so much because of
+its truth, however, as because it was the discovery of a New Yorker. I
+always defend Chicago against New Yorkers, for I love the place, partly
+for itself and partly because I was born and spent my boyhood there.
+
+I know a great many other ex-Chicagoans who now live in New York, as I
+do, and I have noticed with amusement that the side we take depends upon
+the society in which we are. If we are with Chicagoans, we defend New
+York; if with New Yorkers, we defend Chicago. We are like those people
+in the circus who stand upon the backs of two horses at once. Only
+among ourselves do we go in for candor.
+
+The other day I met a man and his wife, transplanted Chicagoans, on the
+street in New York.
+
+"How long have you been here?" I asked.
+
+"Three years," said the husband.
+
+"Why did you come?"
+
+"For business reasons."
+
+"How do you like the change?"
+
+The husband hesitated. "Well, I've done a great deal better here than I
+ever did in Chicago," he said.
+
+"How do you like it?" I asked the wife.
+
+"New York gives us more advantages," she said, "but I prefer Chicago
+people."
+
+"Would you like to go back?"
+
+The wife hesitated, but the husband shook his head.
+
+"No," he replied, "there's something about New York that gets into your
+blood. To go back to Chicago would seem like retrograding."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Among my notes I find the record of a conversation with a New York girl
+who married a Chicago man and went out there to live.
+
+"I was very lonely at first," she said. "One day a man came around
+selling pencils. I happened to see him at the door. He said: 'I'm an
+actor, and I'm trying to raise money to get back to New York.' As I was
+feeling then I'd have given him anything in the house just because that
+was where he wanted to go. I gave him some money. 'Here,' I said, 'you
+take this and go on back to New York.' 'Why,' he inquired, 'are you from
+New York, too?' I said I was. Then he asked me: 'What are you doing away
+out here?' 'Oh,' I told him, 'this is my home now. I live here.' He
+thanked me, and as he put the money in his pocket he shook his head and
+said: 'Too bad! Too bad!'
+
+"That will show you how I felt at first. But when I came to know Chicago
+people I liked them. And now I wouldn't go back for anything."
+
+There is testimony from both sides.
+
+With the literary man the situation is, perhaps, a little different. New
+York is practically his one big market place. I was speaking about that
+the other day with an author who used to live in Chicago.
+
+"The atmosphere out there is not nearly so stimulating for a writer," he
+assured me. "Here, in New York, even a pretty big writer is lost in the
+shuffle. There, he is a shining mark. The Chicago writers are likely to
+be a little bit self-conscious and naive. They have their own local
+literary gods, and they're rather inclined to sit around and talk
+solemnly about 'Art with a capital A.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Necessarily, when the adherents of two cities start an argument, they
+are confined to concrete points. They talk about opera and theaters and
+buildings and hotels and stores, and seldom touch upon such subtle
+things as city spirit. For spirit is a hard thing to deal with and a
+harder thing to prove. Yet "greatness knows itself." Chicago
+unquestionably knows that it is great, and that its greatness is of the
+spirit. But the Chicagoan, debating in favor of his city, is unable to
+"get that over," and is therefore obliged to fall back upon two last,
+invariable defenses: the department store of Marshall Field & Co. and
+the Blackstone Hotel.
+
+The Blackstone he will tell you, with an eye lit by fanatical belief, is
+positively the finest hotel in the whole United States. Mention the
+Ritz, the Plaza, the St. Regis, the Biltmore, or any other hotel to him,
+and it makes no difference; the Blackstone is the best. As to Marshall
+Field's, he is no less positive: It is not merely the largest but also
+the very finest store in the whole world.
+
+I have never stopped at any of those hotels with which the New Yorker
+would attempt to defeat the Blackstone. But I have stopped at the
+Blackstone, and it is undeniably a very good hotel. One of the most
+agreeable things about it is the air of willing service which one senses
+in its staff. It is an excellent manager who can instil into his
+servants that spirit which causes them to seem to be eternally on
+tiptoe--not for a tip but for a chance to serve. Further, the Blackstone
+occupies a position, with regard to the fashionable life of Chicago,
+which is not paralleled by any single hotel in New York. Socially it is
+preeminently the place.
+
+General dancing in such public restaurants as Rector's--the original
+Rector's is in Chicago, you know--and in the dining rooms of some
+hotels, was started in Chicago, but was soon stopped by municipal
+regulation. Since that time other schemes have been devised. Dances are
+held regularly in the ballrooms of most of the hotels, but are managed
+as clubs or semi-private gatherings. This arrangement has its
+advantages. It would have its advantages, indeed, if it did nothing more
+than put the brakes on the dancing craze--as any one can testify who has
+seen his friends offering up their business and their brains as a
+sacrifice to Terpsichore. But that is not what I started to say. The
+advantage of the system which was in vogue at the Blackstone, when I was
+there, is that, to get into the ballroom people must be known; wherefore
+ladies who still have doubts as to the propriety of dancing in a public
+restaurant need not, and do not, hesitate to go there and dance to their
+toes' content.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+FIELD'S AND THE "TRIBUNE"
+
+
+Of course we visited Marshall Field's.
+
+The very obliging gentleman who showed us about the inconceivably
+enormous buildings, rushing from floor to floor, poking in and out
+through mysterious, baffling doors and passage-ways, now in the public
+part of the store where goods are sold, now behind the scenes where they
+are made--this gentleman seemed to have the whole place in his
+head--almost as great a feat as knowing the whole world by heart.
+
+"How much time can you spare?" he asked as we set out from the top
+floor, where he had shown us a huge recreation room, gymnasium, and
+dining room, all for the use of the employees.
+
+"How long should it take?"
+
+"It can be done in two hours," he said, "if we keep moving all the
+time."
+
+"All right," I said--and we did keep moving. Through great rooms full of
+trunks, of brass beds, through vast galleries of furniture, through
+restaurants, grilles, afternoon tea rooms, rooms full of curtains and
+coverings and cushions and corsets and waists and hats and carpets and
+rugs and linoleum and lamps and toys and stationery and silver, and
+Heaven only knows what else, over miles and miles of pleasant, soft,
+green carpet, I trotted along beside the amazing man who not only knew
+the way, but seemed even to know the clerks. Part of the time I tried to
+look about me at the phantasmagoria of things with which civilization
+has encumbered the human race; part of the time I listened to our
+cicerone; part of the time I walked blindly, scribbling notes, while my
+companion guided my steps.
+
+Here are some of the notes:
+
+Ten thousand employees in retail store----Choral society, two hundred
+members, made up of sales-people----Twelve baseball teams in retail
+store; twelve in wholesale; play during season, and, finally, for
+championship cup, on "Marshall Field Day"----Lectures on various topics,
+fabrics, etc., for employees, also for outsiders: women's clubs,
+etc.----Employees' lunch: soup, meat, vegetables, etc., sixteen
+cents----Largest retail custom dressmaking business in the
+country----Largest business in ready-made apparel----Largest retail
+millinery business----Largest retail shoe business----Largest branch of
+Chicago public library (for employees)----Largest postal sub-station in
+Chicago----Largest--largest--largest!
+
+Now and then when something interested me particularly we would pause
+and catch our breath. Once we stopped for two or three minutes in a fine
+schoolroom, where some stock-boys and stock-girls were having a lesson
+in fractions--"to fit them for better positions." Again we paused in a
+children's playroom, where mothers left their youngsters while they went
+to do their shopping, and where certain youngsters, thus deposited, were
+having a gorgeous time, sliding down things, and running around other
+things, and crawling over and under still other things. Still again we
+paused at the telephone switchboard--a switchboard large enough to take
+care of the entire business of a city of the size of Springfield, the
+capital of Illinois. And still again we paused at the postal
+sub-station, where fifty to sixty thousand dollars' worth of stamps are
+sold in a year, and which does as great a postal business, in the
+holiday season, as the whole city of Milwaukee does at the same period.
+
+At one time we would be walking through a great shirt factory, set off
+in one corner of that endless building, all unknown to the shoppers who
+never get behind the scenes; then we would pop out again into the
+dressed-up part of the store, just as one goes from the kitchen and the
+pantry of a house into the formality of dining room and drawing room.
+And as we appeared thus, and our guide was recognized as the assistant
+manager of all that kingdom, with its population of ten thousand,
+saleswomen would rise suddenly from seats, little gossiping groups would
+disperse quickly, and floor men, who had been talking with saleswomen,
+would begin to occupy themselves with other matters. I remember coming
+upon a "silence room" for saleswomen--a large, dark, quiet chamber, in
+which was an attendant; also a saleswoman who was restlessly resting by
+rocking herself in a chair. And as we moved through the store we kept
+taking off our hats as we went behind the scenes, and putting them on as
+we emerged into the public parts. Never before had I realized how much
+of a department store is a world unseen by shoppers. At one point, in
+that hidden world, a vast number of women were sewing upon dresses. I
+had hardly time to look upon this picture when, rushing through a little
+door, in pursuit of my active guide, I found myself in a maze of glass,
+and long-piled carpets, and mahogany, and electric light, and pretty
+frocks, disposed about on forms. Also disposed about were many "perfect
+thirty-sixes," with piles of taffy-colored hair, doing the "debutante
+slouch" in their trim black costumes, so slinky and alluring. Here I had
+a strong impulse to halt, to pause and examine the carpets and woodwork,
+and one thing and another. But no! Our guardian had a professional pride
+in getting us through the store within two hours, according to his
+promise. I would gladly have allowed him an extra ten minutes if I could
+have spent it in that place, but on we went--my companion and I dragging
+behind a little and looking backward at the Lorelei--I remember that,
+because I ran into a man and knocked my hat off.
+
+At last we came to the information bureau, and as there was a
+particularly attractive young person behind the desk, it occurred to me
+that this would be a fine time to get a little information.
+
+"I wonder if I can stump that sinuous sibyl," I said.
+
+"Try it," said our conductor.
+
+So I went over to her and asked: "How large is this store, please?"
+
+"You mean the building?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"There is fifty acres of floor space under this roof," she said. "There
+are sixteen floors: thirteen stories rising two hundred and fifty-eight
+feet above the street, and three basements, extending forty-three and a
+half feet below. The building takes up one entire block. The new
+building devoted exclusively to men's goods is just across Washington
+Street. That building is--"
+
+"Thank you very much," I said. "That's all I want to know about that.
+Can you tell me the population of Chicago?"
+
+"Two million three hundred and eighty-eight thousand five hundred," she
+said glibly, showing me her pretty teeth.
+
+Then I racked my brains for a difficult question.
+
+"Now," I said, "will you please tell me where Charles Towne was born?"
+
+"Do you mean Charles A. Towne, the lawyer; Charles Wayland Towne, the
+author; or Charles Hanson Towne, the poet?" she demanded.
+
+I managed to say that I meant the poet Towne.
+
+"He was born in Louisville, Kentucky," she informed me sweetly. She
+even gave me the date of his birth, too, but as the poet is a friend of
+mine, I will suppress that.
+
+"Is that all?" she inquired presently, seeing that I was merely gazing
+at her.
+
+"Yes, you adorable creature." The first word of that sentence is all
+that I really uttered. I only thought the rest.
+
+"Very well," she replied, shutting the book in which she had looked up
+the Townes.
+
+"Thanks very much," I said.
+
+"Don't mention it," said she--and went about her business in a way that
+sent me about mine.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aside from its vastness and the variety of its activities, two things
+about Marshall Field's store interested me particularly. One is the
+attitude maintained by the company with regard to claims made in the
+advertising of "sales." When there is a "sale" at Field's comparisons of
+values are not made. It may be said that certain articles are cheap at
+the price at which they are being offered, but it is never put in the
+form: "Was $5. Now $2.50." Field's does not believe in that.
+
+"We take the position," an official explained to me, "that things are
+worth what they will bring. For instance, if some manufacturer has made
+too many overcoats, and we are able to get them at a bargain, or if
+there is a mild winter and overcoats do not sell well, we may place on
+sale a lot of coats which were meant to be sold at $40, but which we are
+willing to sell at $22.50. In such a case we never advertise 'Worth
+$40.' We just point out that these are exceptionally good coats for the
+money. And, when we say that, it is invariably true. This advertising is
+not so sensational as it could be made, of course, but we think that in
+the long run it teaches people to rely upon us."
+
+Another thing which interested me in Field's was the appearance of the
+saleswomen. They do not look like New York saleswomen. In the aggregate
+they look happier, simpler, and more natural. I saw no women behind the
+counters there who had the haughty, indifferent bearing, the
+nose-in-the-air, to which the New York shopper is accustomed. Among
+these women, no less than among the rich, the Chicago spirit seemed to
+show itself. It is everywhere, that spirit. I admit that, perhaps, it
+does not go with omnipresent taxicabs. I admit that there are more
+effete cities than Chicago. The East is full of them. But that any city
+in the country has more sterling simplicity, greater freedom from sham
+and affectation among all classes, more vigorous cultivation, or more
+well-bred wealth, I respectfully beg to doubt.
+
+No, I have _not_ forgotten Boston and Philadelphia.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In an earlier chapter I told of a man I met upon a train who, though he
+lived in Buffalo, had never seen Niagara Falls. In Chicago it occurred
+to me that, though I had worked on a newspaper, I had never stood as an
+observer and watched a newspaper "go through." So, one Saturday night
+after sitting around the city room of the Chicago "Tribune"--which is
+one of the world's great newspapers--and talking with a group of men as
+interesting as any men I ever found together, I was placed in charge of
+James Durkin, the world's most eminent office boy, who forthwith took me
+to the nether regions of the "Tribune" Building.
+
+With its floor of big steel plates, its towering presses, vast and
+incomprehensible, and its grimy men in overalls, the pressroom struck me
+as resembling nothing so much as the engine room of an ocean liner.
+
+The color presses were already roaring, shedding streams of printed paper
+like swift waterfalls, down which shot an endless chain of Mona
+Lisas--for the Mona Lisa took the whole front page of the "Tribune"
+colored supplement that week. At the bottom, where the "folder" put the
+central creases in them, the paper torrents narrowed to a disappearing
+point, giving the illusion of a subterranean river, vanishing beneath
+the floor. But the river didn't vanish. It was caught, and measured, and
+folded, and cut, and counted by machinery, as swift, as eye-defying, as
+a moving picture; machinery which miraculously converted a cataract into
+prim piles of Sunday newspapers, which were, in turn, gathered up and
+rushed away to the mailing room--whither, presently, we followed.
+
+In the mailing room I made the acquaintance of a machine with which, if
+it had not been so busy, I should have liked to shake hands, and sit
+down somewhere for a quiet chat. For it was a machine possessed of the
+Chicago spirit: modest, businesslike, effective, and highly intelligent.
+I did not interrupt it, but watched it at its work. And this is what it
+did: It took Sunday papers, one by one, from a great pile which was
+handed to it every now and then, folded them neatly, wrapped them in
+manila paper, sealed them up with mucilage, squeezed them, so that the
+seal would hold, addressed them to out-of-town subscribers and dropped
+them into a mail sack. There was a man who hovered about, acting as a
+sort of valet to this highly capable machine, but all he had to do was
+to bring it more newspapers from time to time, and to take away the mail
+bags when they were full, or when the machine had finished with all the
+subscribers in one town, and began on another. Nor did it fail to serve
+notice of each such change. Every time it started in on a new town it
+dipped its thumb in some red ink, and made a dab on the wrapper of the
+first paper, so that its valet--poor human thing--would know enough to
+furnish a new mail bag. I noted the name to which one red-dabbed paper
+was addressed: _E. J. Henry, Bosco, Wis._, and I wondered if Mr. Henry
+had ever wondered what made that florid mark.
+
+It was near midnight then. All Bosco was asleep. Was Mr. Henry dreaming?
+And however wonderful his dream, could it surpass, in wonder, this
+gigantic organization which, for a tiny sum, tells him, daily,
+everything that happens everywhere?
+
+Think of the men and the machines that work for Mr. E. J. Henry,
+resident of Bosco, in the Badger State! Think of the lumbermen who cut
+the logs; of the Eastern rivers down which those logs float; of the
+great pulp mills which convert them into paper. Think of the railroad
+trains which bring that paper to Chicago. Think of the factories which
+build presses for the ultimate defacement of that paper; and the other
+factories which make the ink. Think of the reporters working everywhere!
+Think of the men who laid the wires with which the world is webbed, that
+news may fly; and the men who sit at the ends of those wires, in all
+parts of the globe, ticking out the story of the day to the "Tribune"
+office in Chicago, where it is received by other men, who give it to the
+editors, who prepare it for the linotypers, who set it for the
+stereotypers, who make it into plates for the presses, which print it
+upon the paper, which is folded, addressed, and dropped into a mail bag,
+which is rushed off in a motor through the midnight streets and put
+aboard a train, which carries it to Bosco, where it is taken by the
+postman and delivered at the residence of Mr. E. J. Henry, who, after
+tearing the manila wrapper, opening the paper, and glancing through it,
+remarks: "Pshaw! There's no news to-day!" and, forthwith, rising from
+the breakfast table, takes up an old pair of shoes, wraps them in his
+copy of the Chicago "Tribune," tucks them under his arm and takes them
+down to the cobbler to be half-soled.
+
+_Sic transit gloria!_
+
+Up-stairs, on the roof of the "Tribune" Building, in a kind of
+deck-house, is a club, made up of members of the staff, and here,
+through the courtesy of some of the editors, my companion and I were
+invited to have supper. When I had eaten my fill, I had a happy thought.
+Here, at my mercy, were a lot of men who were engaged in the business of
+sending out reporters to molest the world for interviews. I decided to
+turn the tables and, then and there, interview them--all of them. And I
+did it. And they took it very well.
+
+I had heard that the "Column"--that sometimes, if not always, humorous
+newspaper department, which now abounds throughout the country,
+threatening to become a pestilence--originated with the "Tribune." I
+asked about that, and in return received, from several sources, the
+history of "Columns," as recollected by these men.
+
+Probably the first regular humorous column in the country--certainly the
+first to attract any considerable attention,--was conducted for the
+"Tribune" by Henry Ten Eyck White, familiarly known as "Butch" White. It
+started about 1885, under the heading, "Lakeside Musings." After running
+this column for some five years, White gave it up, and it was taken
+over, under the same heading, by Eugene Field, who made it even better
+known than it had been before.
+
+Field had started as a "columnist" on the Denver "Tribune," where he had
+run his "Tribune Primer"; later he had been brought to Chicago by
+Melville E. Stone (now general manager of the Associated Press) and
+Victor F. Lawson, who had together established the Chicago "Daily News,"
+of which Mr. Lawson is the present editor and publisher. Field's column
+in the "News" was known as "Sharps and Flats." In it appeared his free
+translations of the Odes of Horace, and much of his best known verse.
+Also he printed gossip of the stage and of literary matters--the latter
+being gathered by him at the meetings of a little club, "The
+Bibliophiles," composed of prominent Chicagoans. This club used to meet
+in the famous old McClurg bookstore.
+
+[Illustration: Chicago's skyline from the docks.... A city which rebuilt
+itself after the fire; in the next decade doubled its size; and now has
+a population of two million, plus a city of about the size of San
+Francisco]
+
+In 1890 George Ade came from Indiana, and after having been a reporter
+on the Chicago "Record" for one year, started his famous "Stories of the
+Street and Town," under which heading much of his best early work
+appeared. This department was illustrated by John T. McCutcheon, another
+Indiana boy. At about this time, Roswell Field, a brother of Eugene, was
+conducting a column called "Lights and Shadows" in the Chicago "Evening
+Post," in which paper Finley Peter Dunne was also beginning his
+"Dooleys." Dunne was born in Chicago and was a reporter on several
+Chicago papers before he found his level. He got the idea for "Dooley"
+from Jim McGarry, who had a saloon opposite the "Tribune" building, and
+employed a bartender named Casey, who was a foil for him. McGarry was
+described to me by a "Tribune" man who knew him, as "a crusty old
+cuss."
+
+After some years Dunne left the "Post" and became editor of the Chicago
+"Journal," to which paper came (from Vermont by way of Duluth) Bert
+Leston Taylor. Taylor ran a department on the "Journal" which was called
+"A Little About Everything," and one of his "contribs" was a young
+insurance man, Franklin P. Adams. Later, when Taylor left the "Journal"
+to take a position on the "Tribune," Adams left the insurance business
+and went at "columning" in earnest, replacing Taylor on the "Journal."
+Some years since Adams migrated to the metropolis, where he now conducts
+a column called "The Conning Tower" in the New York "Tribune."
+
+Taylor, in the meantime, had started his famous column known as "A
+Line-o'-Type or Two." This he ran for three years, after which he moved
+to New York and became editor of "Puck." Before Taylor left the
+"Tribune," Wilbur D. Nesbit, who had been running a column which he
+signed "Josh Wink," in the Baltimore "American," came to Chicago and
+started a column called "The Top o' the Morning," which, for a time,
+alternated with Taylor's "Line-o'-Type." Later Nesbit moved over to the
+"Post," where he conducted a department called "The Innocent Bystander,"
+leaving the "Tribune," for a time, without a "column."
+
+In the next few years two other "columns" started in Chicago,
+"Alternating Currents," conducted by S. E. Kiser, for the
+"Record-Herald," and "In the Wake of the News," which was started in the
+"Tribune" by the late "Hughey" Keough, who is still remembered as an
+exceptionally gifted man. When Keough died, Hugh S. Fullerton ran the
+column for a time, after which it was taken up by R. W. Lardner, who, I
+believe, continues to conduct it, although he has recently written
+baseball stories which have been published in "The Saturday Evening
+Post," and have attracted much attention. Kiser also continues his
+column in the "Record-Herald." Another column, which started a year or
+so ago is "Breakfast Food" in the Chicago "Examiner," conducted by
+George Phair, formerly of Milwaukee.
+
+The Chicago "Tribune" now has two "columns," for, five years since, it
+recaptured Bert Leston Taylor, and brought him back to revive his
+"Line-o'-Type." He has been there ever since, and, so far as I know
+"columns," his is the best in the United States. It has been widely
+imitated, as has also been the work of the "Tribune's" famous
+cartoonist, John T. McCutcheon. But something that a "Tribune" man said
+to me of McCutcheon, is no less true, I think, of Taylor: "They can
+imitate his style, but they cannot imitate his mind."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE STOCKYARDS
+
+
+It is rather widely known, I think, that Chicago built the first
+steel-frame skyscraper--the Tacoma Building--but I do not believe that
+the world knows that Kohlsaat's in Chicago was the first quick-lunch
+place of its kind, or that the first "free lunch" in the country was
+established, many years since, in the basement saloon at the corner of
+State and Madison Streets. Considering the skyscrapers and quick lunches
+and free lunches that there are to-day, it is hard to realize that there
+ever was a first one anywhere. But the origin of things which have
+become national institutions, as these things have, seems to me to be
+worth recording here. It may be added that the loyal Chicagoan who told
+of these things seemed to be prouder of the "free lunch" and the quick
+lunch than of the skyscraper.
+
+Of two things I mentioned to him he was not proud at all. One was the
+famous pair of First Ward aldermen who have attained a national fame
+under their nick-names, "Hinky Dink" and "Bathhouse John." The other was
+the stockyards.
+
+"Why is it," he asked in a bored and irritated tone, "that every one who
+comes out here has to go to the stockyards?"
+
+"Are you aware," I returned, "that half the bank clearings of Chicago
+are traceable to the stockyards?"
+
+He answered with a noncommittal grunt.
+
+His was not the attitude of the Detroit man who wants you to know that
+Detroit does something more than make automobiles, or of the Grand
+Rapids man who says: "We make lots of things here besides furniture." He
+was really ashamed of the stockyards, as a man may, perhaps, be ashamed
+of the fact that his father made his money in some business with a smell
+to it. And because he felt so deeply on the subject, I had the half idea
+of not touching on the stockyards in this chapter.
+
+However the news that my companion and myself were there to "do" Chicago
+was printed in the papers, and presently the stockyards began to call us
+up. It didn't even ask if we were coming. It just asked _when_. And as I
+hesitated, it settled the whole matter then and there by saying it would
+call for us in its motor car, at once.
+
+I may say at the outset that, to quote the phrase of Mr. Freer of
+Detroit, the stockyards "has no esthetic value." It is a place of mud,
+and railroad tracks, and cattle cars, and cattle pens, and overhead
+runways, and great ugly brick buildings, and men on ponies, and raucous
+grunts, and squeals, and smells--a place which causes the heart to sink
+with a sickening heaviness.
+
+Our first call was at the Welfare Building, where we were shown some of
+the things which are being done to benefit employees of the packing
+houses. It was noon-time. The enormous lunch room was well occupied. A
+girl was playing ragtime at a piano on a platform. The room was clean
+and airy. The women wore aprons and white caps. A good lunch cost six
+cents. There were iron lockers in the locker room--lockers such as one
+sees in an athletic club. There were marble shower baths for the men and
+for the women. There were two manicures who did nothing but see to the
+hands of the women working in the plant. There were notices of classes
+in housekeeping, cooking, washing, house furnishing, the preparation of
+food for the sick--signs printed in English, Russian, Slovak, Polish,
+Bohemian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Croatian,
+Italian, and Greek. Obviously, the company was doing things to help
+these people. Obviously it was proud of what it was doing. Obviously I
+should have rejoiced, saying to myself: "See how these poor, ignorant
+foreigners who come over here to our beautiful and somewhat free country
+are being elevated!" But all I could think of was: "What a horrible
+place the stockyards is! How I loathe it here!"
+
+On the North Side of Chicago there is an old and exclusive club, dating
+from before the days of motor cars, which is known as the Saddle and
+Cycle Club. The lunch club for the various packing-house officials, at
+the stockyards, has a name bearing perhaps some satirical relation to
+that of the other club. It is called the Saddle and Sirloin Club, and in
+that club I ate a piece of sirloin the memory of which will always
+remain with me as something sacred.
+
+After lunching and visiting the offices of a packing company where, we
+were told, an average daily business of $1,300,000 is done--and the
+place looks it--we visited the Stockyards Inn, which is really an
+astonishing establishment. The astonishing quality about it is that it
+is a thing of beauty which has grown up in a place as far removed from
+beauty as any that I ever looked upon outside a mining camp. A charming,
+low, half-timbered building, the Inn is like something at
+Stratford-on-Avon; and by some strange freak of chance the man who runs
+it has a taste for the antique in furniture and chinaware. Inside it is
+almost like a fine old country house--pleasant cretonnes, grate fires,
+old Chippendale chairs, mahogany tables, grandfather's clocks, pewter,
+and luster ware. All this for cattlemen who bring their flocks and herds
+into the yards! The only thing to spoil it is the all-pervasive smell of
+animals.
+
+From there we went to the place of death.
+
+Through a small door the fated pigs enter the final pen fifteen or
+twenty at a time. They are nervous, perhaps because of the smell coming
+from within, perhaps because of the sounds. A man in the pen loops a
+chain around the hind foot of each successive pig, and then slips the
+iron ring at the other end of the chain over a hook at the outer margin
+of a revolving drum, perhaps ten feet in diameter. As the drum revolves
+the hook rises, slowly, drawing the pig backward by the leg, and
+finally lifting it bodily, head downward. When the hook reaches the top
+of its orbit it transfers the animal to a trolley, upon which it slides
+in due course to the waiting butcher, who dispatches it with a knife
+thrust in the neck, and turns to receive the next pig.
+
+The manners of the pigs on their way to execution held me with a horrid
+fascination. Pigs look so much alike that we assume them to be minus
+individuality. That is not so. The French Revolution--of which the
+stockyards reminded Dr. George Brandes, the literary critic, who
+recently visited this country--scarcely could have brought out in its
+victims a wider range of characteristics than these pigs show. I have
+often noticed, of course, that some people are like pigs, but I had
+never before suspected that all pigs are so very much like people. Some
+of them come in yelling with fright. Others are silent. They shift about
+nervously, and sniff, as though scenting death. "It's the steam they
+smell," said a man in overalls beside me. Well, perhaps it is. But I
+could smell death there, and I still think the pigs can smell it, too.
+Some of the pigs lean against each other for companionship in their
+distress. Others merely wait with bowed heads, giving a curious effect
+of porcine resignation. When they feel the tug of the chain, and are
+dragged backward, some of them set up a new and frightful squealing;
+others go in silence, and with a sort of dignity, like martyrs dying for
+a cause.
+
+As I stood there, studying the temperament of pigs, I saw the butcher
+looking up at me as he wiped his long, thin blade. He was a rawboned
+Slav with a pale face, high cheek bones, and large brown eyes, holding
+within their somber depths an expression of thoughtful, dreamy
+abstraction. I have never seen such eyes. Without prejudice or pity they
+seemed to look alike on man and pig. Being upon the platform above him,
+right side up, and free to go when I should please, I felt safe for the
+moment. But suppose I were not so--suppose I were to come along to him,
+hanging by one leg from the trolley--what would he do then? Would he
+stop to ask why they had sent another sort of animal, I wondered? Or
+would he do his work impartially?
+
+I should not wish to take the chance.
+
+The progress of the pig is swift--if the transition from pig to pork may
+be termed "progress." The carcass travels presently through boiling
+water, and emerges pink and clean. And as it goes along upon its
+trolley, it passes one man after another, each with an active knife,
+until, thirty minutes later, when it has undergone the government
+inspection, it is headless and in halves--mere meat, which looks as
+though it never could have been alive.
+
+From the slaughter-house we passed through the smoke-house, where ham
+and bacon were smoking over hardwood fires in rows of ovens big as
+blocks of houses. Then through the pickling room with its enormous
+hogs-heads, giving the appearance of a monkish wine cellar. Then
+through the curing room with its countless piles of dry salt pork,
+neatly arranged like giant bricks.
+
+The enthusiastic gentleman who escorted us kept pointing out the
+beauties of the way this work was done: the cleanliness, the system by
+which the rooms are washed with steam, the gigantic scale of all the
+operations. I heard, I noticed, I agreed. But all the time my mind was
+full of thoughts of dying pigs. Indeed, I had forgotten for the moment
+that other animals are also killed to feed carnivorous man. However, I
+was reminded of that, presently, when we came upon another building,
+consecrated to the conversion of life into veal and beef.
+
+The steers meet death in little pens. It descends upon them unexpectedly
+from above, dealt out by a man with a sledge, who cracks them between
+the horns with a sound like that of a woodman's ax upon a tree. The
+creatures quiver and quickly crumple.
+
+It is swift. In half a minute the false bottom of the pen turns up and
+rolls them out upon the floor, inert as bags of meal. Only after death
+do these cattle find their way to an elevated trolley line, like that
+used for the pigs. And, as with the pigs, they move along speedily;
+shortly they are to be seen in the beef cooler, where they hang in
+tremendous rows, forming strange vistas--a forest of dead meat.
+
+The scene where calves were being killed according to the Jewish law,
+for kosher meat, presented the most sanguinary spectacle with which my
+eyes have ever burned. Two rabbis, old bearded men, performed the rites
+with long, slim, shiny blades. Literally they waded in a lake of gore.
+Even the walls were covered with it. Looking down upon them from above,
+we saw them silhouetted on a sheet of pigment utterly beyond
+comparison--for, without exaggeration, fire would look pale and cold
+beside the shrieking crimson of that blood--glistening, wet, and warm in
+the electric light.
+
+I shall not attempt to conceal the fact that I was glad to leave the
+stockyards.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When, a short time later, the motor car was bearing us smoothly down the
+sunlit boulevard, the Advertising Gentleman who had conducted us through
+all the carnage put an abrupt question to me.
+
+"Do you want to be original?" he demanded.
+
+"I suppose all writers hope to be," I answered.
+
+"Well," he replied, tapping me emphatically upon the knee, "I'll tell
+you how to do it. When you write about the Yards, don't mention the
+killing. Everybody's done that. There's nothing more to say. What you
+want to do is to dwell on the other side. That's the way to be
+original."
+
+"The other side?" I murmured feebly.
+
+"Sure!" he cried. "Look at this." As he spoke, he produced from a pocket
+some proofs of pen-and-ink drawings--pictures of sweet-faced girls,
+encased in spotless aprons, wearing upon their heads alluring caps, and
+upon their lips the smiles of angels, while, with their dainty
+rose-tipped fingers, they packed the luscious by-products of
+cattle-killing into tins--tins which shone as only the pen of the
+"commercial artist" can make tins shine.
+
+"There's your story!" he exclaimed. "The poetic side of packing! Don't
+write about the slaughter-houses. Dwell on daintiness--pretty girls in
+white caps--everything shining and clean! Don't you see that's the way
+to make your story original?"
+
+Of course I saw it at once. Original? Why, original is no name for it! I
+could never have conceived such originality! It isn't in me! I should no
+more have thought of writing only of pretty girls and pretty cans, after
+witnessing those bloody scenes, than of describing the battle at Liege
+in terms of polish used on soldiers' buttons.
+
+But original as the idea is, you perceive I have not used it. I could
+not bear to. He thought of it first. It belonged to him. If I used it,
+the originality would not be mine, but his. So I have deliberately
+written the story in my own hackneyed way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE HONORABLE HINKY DINK
+
+
+Has it ever struck you that our mental attitude toward famous men varies
+in this respect: that while we think of some of them as human beings
+with whom we might conceivably shake hands and have a chat, we think of
+others as legendary creatures, strange and remote--beings hardly to be
+looked upon by human eyes?
+
+Some years since, in the courtyard of a hotel in Paris, I met a friend
+of mine. He was hurrying in the direction of the bar.
+
+"Come on," he beckoned. "There are some people here you'll want to
+meet."
+
+I followed him in and to a table at which two men were seated. One
+proved to be Alfred Sutro; the other Maurice Maeterlinck.
+
+To meet Mr. Sutro was delightful, but it was conceivable. Not so
+Maeterlinck. To shake hands with him, to sit at the same table, to see
+that he wore a black coat, a stiff collar (it was too large for him), a
+black string tie, a square-crowned derby hat; to see him seated in a bar
+sipping beer like any man--that was not conceivable.
+
+I sat there speechless, trying to convince myself of what I saw.
+
+"That man over there is actually Maeterlinck!" I kept assuring myself.
+"I am looking at Maeterlinck! Now he nods the head in which 'The
+Bluebird' was conceived. Now he lifts his beer glass in the hand which
+indited 'Monna Vanna!'"
+
+Nor was my amazement due entirely to the surprise of meeting a
+much-admired man. It was due, most of all, to a feeling which I must
+have had--although I was never before conscious of it--a feeling that no
+such man as Maeterlinck existed in reality; that he was a purely
+legendary being; a figure in white robes and sandals, harping and
+singing in some Elysian temple.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I experienced a somewhat similar emotion in Chicago on being introduced
+to Hinky Dink. In saying that, I do not mean to be irreverent. I only
+mean that I had always thought of Hinky Dink as a fictitious personage.
+He and his colleague, Bathhouse John, have figured in my mind as a pair
+of absurd, imaginary figures, such as might have been invented by some
+whimsical son of a comic supplement like Winsor McCay.
+
+Now, as I soon discovered, the Hinky Dink of the newspapers is, as a
+matter of fact, to a large extent fictitious. He is a legend, built up
+out of countless comic stories and newspaper cartoons. The real Hinky
+Dink--otherwise Alderman Michael Kenna--is a very different person, for
+whatever may be said against him--and much is--he is a very real human
+being.
+
+I clip this brief summary of his life from the Chicago "Record-Herald."
+
+    Born on the West Side, August 18, 1858.
+    Started life as a newsboy.
+    "Crowned" as Alderman of the First Ward in 1897.
+    Reelected biennially ever since.
+    Owner in fief of various privileges in the First Ward.
+    Lord of the Workingmen's Exchange.
+    Overlord of floaters, voters, and other liege subjects.
+
+The Workingmen's Exchange, referred to above, is one of two saloons
+operated by the Alderman, on South Clark Street, and it is a show place
+for those who wish to look upon the darker side of things. It is a very
+large saloon, having one of the longest bars I ever saw; also one of the
+busiest. Hardly anything but beer is served there; beer in schooners
+little smaller than a man's head. These are known locally as "babies,"
+and, by a curious custom, the man who removes his fingers from his glass
+forfeits it to any one who takes it up. Nor are takers lacking.
+
+"I'll tell you a funny thing about this place," said my friend the
+veteran police reporter, who was somewhat apologetically doing the
+honors. (Police reporters are always apologetic when they show you over
+a town that has been "cleaned up.")
+
+"What?" I asked.
+
+"No one has ever been killed in here," he said.
+
+I had to admit that it was a funny thing. After looking at the faces
+lined up at the bar I should not have imagined it possible. Presently
+we crossed the street to the Alderman's other saloon; a very different
+sort of place, shining with mirrors, mahogany, and brass, and frequented
+by a better class of men. Here we met Hinky Dink.
+
+He is a slight man, so short of stature that when he leans a little,
+resting his elbow on the bar, his arm runs out horizontally from the
+shoulder. He wore an extremely neat brown suit (there was even a white
+collarette inside the vest!) a round black felt hat, and a heavy watch
+chain, from which hung a large circular charm with a star and crescent
+set in diamonds. Though it was late at night, he looked as if he had
+just been washed and brushed.
+
+His face is exceedingly interesting. His lips are thin; his nose is
+sharp, coming to a rather pronounced point, and his eyes are remarkable
+for what they see and what they do not tell. They are poker
+eyes--gray-blue, cold, penetrating, unrevealing. My companion and I felt
+that while we were "getting" Hinky Dink, he was not failing to "get" us.
+
+Far from being tough or vicious in his manner or conversation, the
+little Alderman is very quiet. There is, indeed, a kind of gentleness
+about him. His English is, I should say, quite as good as that of the
+average man, while his thinking is much above the average as to
+quickness and clearness. As between himself and Bathhouse John, the
+other First Ward fixture on the Board of Aldermen, it is generally
+conceded that Hinky Dink is the more able and intelligent. On this
+point, however, I was unable to draw my own conclusions. The Bathhouse
+was ill when I was in Chicago.
+
+[Illustration: Two rabbis, old bearded men, performed the rites with
+long, slim, shiny blades]
+
+In the ordinary conversation of the Honorable Hinky Dink there is no
+trace of brogue, but a faint touch of brogue manifests itself when he
+speaks with unwonted vehemence--as, for example, when he told us about
+the injustices which he alleged were perpetrated upon the poor voters
+who live in lodging houses in his ward.
+
+The little Alderman is famous for his reticence.
+
+"Small wonder!" said my friend the police reporter. "Look at what the
+papers have handed him! I'll tell you what happens: some city editor
+sends a kid reporter to get a story about Hinky Dink. The kid comes and
+sees Kenna, and doesn't get anything out of him but monosyllables. He
+goes back to the office without any story, but that doesn't make any
+difference. Hinky Dink is fair game. The kid sits down to his typewriter
+and fakes a story, making out that the Alderman didn't only talk, but
+that he talked a kind of tough-guy dialect--'deze-here tings'--'doze
+dere tings'--all that kind of stuff. Can you blame the little fellow for
+not talking?"
+
+I could not.
+
+But he talked to us, and freely. The police reporter told him we were
+"right." That was enough.
+
+As the "red-light district" of Chicago used to be largely in the First
+Ward before it was broken up, I asked the Alderman for his views on the
+segregation of vice versus the other thing, whatever it may be. (Is it
+dissemination?)
+
+"I'll tell you what I think about it," he replied, "but you can't print
+it."
+
+"Why not?" I asked, disappointed.
+
+"Well," he returned, "I believe in a segregated district, but if I'm
+quoted as saying so, why the woman reformers and everybody on the other
+side will take it up and say I'm for it just because I want vice back in
+the First Ward again. I don't. It doesn't make any difference to me
+where you have it. Put it out by the Drainage Canal or anywheres you
+like. But I believe you can't stamp vice out; not the way people are
+made to-day. They never have been able to stamp it out in all these
+thousands of years. And, as long as they can't, it looks to me like it
+was better to get it together all in one bunch than to scatter it all
+over town.
+
+"Now I know there's a whole lot of good people that think segregation is
+a bad thing. Well, it _is_ a bad thing. _Vice_ is a bad thing. But there
+it is, all the same. A lot of these good people don't understand
+conditions. They don't understand what lots of other men and women are
+really like. You got to take people as they are and do what you can.
+
+"One thing that shocks a lot of these high-minded folks that live in
+comfortable homes and never have any trouble except when they have to
+get a new cook, is the idea of commercialized vice that goes with
+segregation. Of course it shocks them. But show me some way to stop it.
+Napoleon believed in segregation and regulation, and a lot of other wise
+people have, too.
+
+"Here's the way I think they ought to handle it: they ought to have a
+district regulated by the Police Department and the Health Department.
+Then there ought to be restrictions. No bright lights for one thing. No
+music. No booze. Cut out those things and you kill the place for
+sightseers. Then there ought to be a law that no woman can be an inmate
+without going and registering with the police, having her record looked
+up, and saying she wants to enter the house. That would prevent any
+possibility of white slavery. Personally, I think there's a lot of bunk
+about this white-slave talk. But this plan would fix it so a girl
+couldn't be kept in a house against her will. Any keeper of a house who
+let in a girl that wasn't registered would be put out of business for
+good and all. Men ought not to be allowed to have any interest, directly
+or indirectly, in the management of these places.
+
+"Now, of course, there's objections to any way at all of handling this
+question. The minute you say 'cut out the booze' that opens a way to
+police graft. But is that any worse than the chance for graft when the
+women are just chased around from place to place by the police?
+Segregation gives them some rights, anyhow.
+
+"Some people say 'segregation doesn't segregate,' Well, that's true,
+too. But segregation keeps the worst of it from being scattered all over
+town, doesn't it? When you scatter these women you have them living in
+buildings alongside of respectable families, or, worse yet, you run them
+onto the streets. That's persecution, and they're bad enough off without
+that.
+
+"Say, do you think Chicago is really any more moral this minute because
+the old red-light district is shut down? A few of the resort keepers
+left town, and maybe a hundred inmates, but most of them stuck. They're
+around in the residence districts now, running what they call 'buffet
+flats.'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Listening to the little Alderman I was convinced of two things. First, I
+felt sure that, without thought of self-interest, he was telling me what
+he really believed. Second, as he is undeniably a man of broad
+experience among unfortunates of various kinds, his views are
+interesting.
+
+"I wish you'd let me print what you have said," I urged as we were
+leaving his saloon.
+
+He shook his head.
+
+"I'll tell you what I'll do," I persisted. "I'll write it out. Perhaps I
+can put it in such a way that people will see that you were playing
+square. Then I'll send it to you, and, if it doesn't misrepresent you,
+perhaps you'll let me print it after all."
+
+"All right," he agreed as we shook hands.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+AN OLYMPIAN PLAN
+
+
+In city planning, as in other things, Chicago has thought and plotted on
+an Olympian scale, and it is characteristic of Chicago that her plan for
+her own beautification should be so much greater than the plan of any
+other city in the country, as to make comparisons unkind. For that
+reason I have eliminated Chicago from consideration, when discussing the
+various group plans, park and boulevard systems, and "civic centers,"
+upon which other American cities are at work.
+
+The Chicago plan is, indeed, too immense a thing to be properly dealt
+with here. It is comparable with nothing less than the Haussman plan for
+Paris, and it is being carried forward, through the years, with the same
+foresight, the same patience and the same indomitable aspiration.
+Indeed, I think greater patience has been required in Chicago, for the
+French people were in sympathy with beauty at a time when the broad
+meaning of the word was actually not understood in this country. Here it
+has been necessary to educate the masses, to cultivate their city pride,
+and to direct that pride into creative channels. It is hardly too much
+to say that the minds of American city-dwellers (and half our race
+inhabits cities) have had to be re-made, in order to prepare them to
+receive such plans as the Chicago plan.
+
+The World's Columbian Exposition, at Chicago, exerted a greater
+influence upon the United States than any other fair has ever exerted
+upon a country. It came at a critical moment in our esthetic history--a
+moment when the sense of beauty of form and color, which had hitherto
+been dormant in Americans, was ready to be aroused.
+
+Fortunately for us, the Chicago Fair was worthy of the opportunity; and
+that it was worthy of the opportunity was due to the late Daniel Hudson
+Burnham, the distinguished architect, who was director of works for the
+Exposition. In the perspective of the twenty-one years which have passed
+since the Chicago Fair, the figure of Mr. Burnham, and the importance of
+the work done by him, grows larger. When the history of the American
+Renaissance comes to be written, Daniel H. Burnham and the men by whom
+he was surrounded at the time the Chicago Fair was being made, will be
+listed among the founders of the movement.
+
+The Fair awoke the American sense of beauty. And before its course was
+run, a group of Chicago business men, some of whom were directors of the
+exposition, determined to have a plan for the entire city which should
+so far as possible reflect the lessons of the Fair in the arrangement of
+streets, parks and plazas, and the grouping of buildings.
+
+After the Fair, the Chicago Commercial Club commissioned Mr. Burnham to
+proceed to re-plan the city. Eight years were consumed in this work. The
+best architects available were called in consultation. After having
+spent more than $200,000, the Commercial Club presented the plan to the
+city, together with an elaborate report.
+
+To carry out the plan, the Chicago City Council, in 1909, created a Plan
+Commission, composed of more than 300 men, representing every element of
+citizenship under the permanent chairmanship of Mr. Charles H. Wacker,
+who had previously been most active in the work. Under Mr. Wacker's
+direction, and with the aid of continued subscriptions from the
+Commercial Club, the work of the Commission has gone on steadily, and
+vast improvements have already been made.
+
+The Plan itself has to do entirely with the physical rearrangement of
+the city. It is designed to relieve congestion, facilitate traffic, and
+safeguard health.
+
+Instead of routing out the Illinois Central Railroad which disfigures
+the lake front of the whole South Side, the plan provides for the making
+of a parkway half a mile wide and five miles long, beyond the tracks,
+where the lake now is. This parkway will extend from Grant Park, at the
+center of the city, all the way to Jackson Park, where the World's Fair
+grounds were. Arrangements have also been made for immense forest areas,
+to encircle the city outside its limits, occupying somewhat the relation
+to it that the Bois de Boulogne and the Bois de Vincennes do to Paris.
+New parks are also to be created within the city.
+
+It is impossible to go into further details here as to these parks, but
+it should be said that, when the lake front parkway system, above
+mentioned, is completed, practically the whole front of Chicago along
+Lake Michigan will be occupied by parks and lagoons, and that Chicago
+expects--and not without reason--to have the finest waterfront of any
+city in the world.
+
+Michigan Avenue, the city's superb central street which already bears
+very heavy traffic, now has a width of 130 feet at the heart of the
+city, excepting to the north, near the river, where it becomes a narrow,
+squalid street, for all that it is the principal highway between the
+North and South Sides. This portion of the street is not only to be
+widened, but will be made into a two-level thoroughfare (the lower level
+for heavy vehicles and the upper for light) crossing the river on a
+double-deck bridge.
+
+It is a notorious fact that the business and shopping district of
+Chicago is at present strangled by the elevated railroad loop, which
+bounds the center of the city, and it is essential for the welfare of
+the city that this area be extended and made more spacious. The City
+Plan provides for a "quadrangle" to cover three square miles at the
+heart of Chicago, to be bounded on the east by Michigan Avenue, on the
+north by Chicago Avenue, on the west by Halsted Street, and on the south
+by Twelfth Street. When this work is done these streets will have been
+turned into wide boulevards, and other streets, running through the
+quadrangle, will also have been widened and improved, principal among
+these being Congress Street, which though not at present cut through,
+will ultimately form a great central artery, leading back from the lake,
+through the center of the quadrangle, forming the axis of the plan, and
+centering on a "civic center," which is to be built at the junction of
+Congress and Halsted Streets and from which diagonal streets will
+radiate in all directions.
+
+Nor does the plan end here. A complete system of exterior roadways will
+some day encircle the city; the water front along the river will be
+improved and new bridges built; also two outer harbors will be
+developed.
+
+By an agreement with the city, no major public work of any description
+is inaugurated until the Plan Commission has passed upon its harmonious
+relationship with the general scheme. The Commission further considers
+the comprehensive development of the city's steam railway and street
+transportation systems; very recently it successfully opposed a railroad
+union depot project which was inimical to the Plan of Chicago, and it
+has generally succeeded in persuading the railroads to work in harmony
+with the plan, when making immediate improvements.
+
+One of the most interesting and intelligently conducted departments
+under the Commission has to do with the education of the people of
+Chicago with regard to the Plan. A great deal of money and energy has
+been expended in this work, with the result that city-wide
+misapprehension concerning the Plan has given place to city-wide
+comprehension. Lectures are given before schools and clubs with the idea
+of teaching Chicago what the plan is, why it is needed, and what great
+European cities have accomplished in similar directions. Books on the
+subject have been published and widely circulated, and one of these,
+"Wacker's Manual," has been adopted as a textbook by the Chicago Public
+Schools, with the idea of fitting the coming generations to carry on the
+work.
+
+If the plan as it stands at present has been accomplished within a long
+lifetime, Chicago will have maintained her reputation for swift action.
+Two or three lifetimes would be time enough in any other city. However,
+Chicago desires the fulfillment of the prophecy she has on paper. Work
+is going on, and the extent to which it will go on in future depends
+entirely upon the ability of the city to finance Plan projects. And when
+a thing depends upon the ability of the city of Chicago, it depends upon
+a very solid and a very splendid thing.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+LOOKING BACKWARD
+
+
+The Chicago Club is the rich, substantial club of the city, an
+organization which may perhaps be compared with the Union Club of New
+York, although the inner atmosphere of the Chicago Club seems somehow
+less formal than that of its New York prototype. However, that is true
+in general where Chicago clubs and New York clubs are compared.
+
+The University Club of Chicago has a very large and handsome building in
+the Gothic style, with a dining room said to be the handsomest club
+dining room in the world: a Gothic hall with fine stained-glass windows.
+Between this clubhouse and the great Gothic piles of the Chicago
+University there exists an agreeable, though perhaps quite accidental,
+architectural harmony.
+
+Excepting Washington University, in St. Louis, Chicago University is the
+one great American college I have seen which seems fully to have
+anticipated its own vastness, and prepared for it with comprehensive
+plans for the grouping of its buildings. Architecturally it is already
+exceedingly harmonious and effective, for its great halls, all of gray
+Bedford stone, are beginning to be toned by the Chicago smoke into what
+will some day be Oxonian mellowness. Even now, by virtue of its ancient
+architecture, its great size and massiveness, it is not without an
+effect of age--an effect which is, however, violently disputed by the
+young trees of the campus. Though these trees have grown as fast as they
+could, they have not been able to keep up with the growth of the great
+institution of learning, fertilized, as it has been, by Mr.
+Rockefeller's millions. Instead of shading the university, the campus
+trees are shaded by it.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The South Shore Country Club is an astonishing resort: a huge pavilion,
+by the lake, on the site of the old World's Fair grounds. It is a
+pleasant place to which to motor for meals, and is much used, especially
+for dining, in the summer time. The building of this club made me think
+of Atlantic City; I felt that I was not in a club at all, but in the
+rotunda of some vast hotel by the sea.
+
+I had no opportunity to visit The Little Room, a small club reported to
+be Chicago's artistic holy of holies, but I did have luncheon at the
+Cliff Dwellers, which is the larger and, I believe, more active
+organization. The Cliff Dwellers is a fine club, made up of writers and
+artists and their friends and allies. I know of no single club in New
+York where one may meet at luncheon a group of men more alive, more
+interesting, or of more varied pursuits, and I may add that I absorbed
+while there a very definite impression that between men following the
+arts, and those following business, the line is not so sharply drawn in
+Chicago as in New York.
+
+At the Cliff Dwellers I met a gentleman, a librarian, who gave me some
+interesting information about the management of libraries in Chicago.
+
+"Chicago is a business city, dominated by business men," he said. "We
+have three large public libraries, one the Chicago Public Library,
+belonging to the city, and two others, the Newberry and the Crerar,
+established by rich men who left money for the purpose.
+
+"The system of interlocking directorates, elsewhere pronounced
+pernicious, has worked very beautifully in affecting cooperation instead
+of competition between these institutions.
+
+"About twenty years ago, at the time of the Crerar foundation, the
+boards of the three libraries met and formed a gentleman's agreement,
+dividing the field of knowledge. It was then arranged that the Chicago
+Public Library should take care of the majority of the people, and that
+the Newberry and the Crerar should specialize, the former in what is
+called the 'Humanities'--philosophy, religion, history, literature, and
+the fine arts; the latter in science, pure and applied. At that time the
+Newberry Library turned over to the Crerar, at cost, all books it
+possessed which properly belonged in the scientific category. And since
+that time there has been practically no duplication among Chicago
+libraries. That is what comes of having public-spirited business men on
+library boards. They run these public institutions as they would run
+their own commercial enterprises. The Harvester Company, for example,
+wouldn't duplicate its own plant right in the same territory. That would
+be waste. But in many cities possessing more than one library,
+duplication of an exactly parallel kind goes on, because the libraries
+do not work together. Boston affords a good example. Between the Boston
+Public Library, the Athenaeum, and the library of Harvard University,
+there is much duplication. Of course a university library is obliged to
+stand more or less alone, but it is possible even for such a library to
+cooperate to some extent with others, and, wherever it is possible to do
+so, the library of the University of Chicago does work with others in
+Chicago. Even the Art Institute is in the combination."
+
+I do not quote this information because the arrangement between the
+libraries of Chicago strikes me as a thing particularly startling, but
+for precisely the opposite reason: it is one of those unstartling
+examples of uncommon common sense which one might easily overlook in
+considering the Plan of Chicago, in gazing at great buildings wreathed
+in whirling smoke, or in contemplating that allegory of infinity which
+confronts one who looks eastward from the bold front of Michigan Avenue
+along Grant Park.
+
+The automobile, which has been such an agency for the promotion of
+suburban and country life, seems to have the habit of invading, for its
+own commercial purposes, those former residence districts, in cities,
+which it has been the means of depopulating. I noticed that in
+Cleveland. There the automobile offered the residents of Euclid Avenue a
+swift and agreeable means of transportation to a pleasanter environment.
+Then, having lured them away, it proceeded to seize upon their former
+lands for showrooms, garages, and automobile accessory shops. The same
+thing has happened in Chicago on Michigan Avenue, where an "automobile
+row" extends for blocks beyond the uptown extremity of Grant Park,
+through a region which but a few years since was one of fashionable
+residences.
+
+I do not like to make the admission, because of loyal memories of the
+old South Side, but--there is no denying it--the South Side has run
+down. In its struggle with the North Side, for leadership, it has come
+off a sorry second. In point of social prestige, as in the matter of
+beauty, it is unqualifiedly whipped. Cottage Grove Avenue, never a
+pleasant street, has deteriorated now into something which, along
+certain reaches, has a painful resemblance to a slum.
+
+It hurt me to see that, for I remember when the little dummy line ran
+out from Thirty-ninth Street to Hyde Park, most of the way between
+fields and woods and little farms. I had forgotten the dummy line until
+I saw the place from which it used to start. Then, back through
+twenty-eight or thirty years, I heard again its shrill whistle and saw
+the conductor, little "Mister Dodge," as he used to come around for
+fares, when we were going out to Fifty-fifth Street to pick violets.
+There are no violets now at Fifty-fifth Street. I saw nothing there but
+rows of sordid-looking buildings, jammed against the street.
+
+Everywhere, as I journeyed about the city how many memories assailed me.
+When I lived in Chicago the Masonic Temple was the great show building
+of the town: the highest building in the world, it was, then. The Art
+Institute was in the brown stone pile now occupied by the Chicago Club.
+The turreted stone house of Potter Palmer, on the Lake Shore Drive was
+the city's most admired residence--a would-be baronial structure which,
+standing there to-day, is a humorous thing: a grandiose attempt, falling
+far short of being a good castle, and going far beyond the architectural
+bounds of a good house. Then there was the old Palmer House hotel, with
+its great billiard and poolroom, and its once-famous barbershop, with a
+silver dollar set at the corner of each marble tile in its floor, to
+amaze the rural visitor. The Palmer House is still there, looking no
+older than it used to look. And most familiar of all, the toy suburban
+trains of the Illinois Central Railroad continue to puff, importantly,
+along the lake front, their locomotives issuing great clouds of steam
+and smoke, which are snatched by the lake wind, and hurled like giant
+snowballs--dirty snowballs, full of cinders--at the imperturbable stone
+front of Michigan Avenue.
+
+[Illustration: As I stood there, studying the temperament of pigs, I saw
+the butcher looking up at me.... I have never seen such eyes]
+
+Chicago has talked, for years, of causing the Illinois Central Railroad
+to run its trains by electricity. No doubt they should be run in that
+way. No doubt the decline of the South Side and the ascendancy of the
+North Side has been caused largely by the fact that the South Side
+lakefront is taken up with tracks and trains, while the North Side
+lakefront is taken up with parks and boulevards. Still, I love the
+Chicago smoke. In some other city I should not love it, but in Chicago
+it is part of the old picture, and for sentimental reasons, I had rather
+pay the larger laundry bills, than see it go.
+
+One day I went down to the station at Van Buren Street, and took the
+funny little train to Oakland, where I used to live. One after the
+other, I passed the old, dilapidated stations, looking more run down
+than ever. Even the Oakland Station was unchanged, and its surroundings
+were as I remembered them, except for signs of a sad, indefinite decay.
+
+Strange sensations, those which come to a man when he visits, after a
+long lapse of years, the places he knew best in childhood. The changes.
+The things which are unchanged. The familiar unfamiliarity. The vivid
+recollections which loom suddenly, like silent ships, from out the fog
+of things forgotten. In that house over there lived a boy named Ben
+Ford, who moved away--to where? And Gertie Hoyt, his cousin, lived next
+door. She had a great thick braid of golden hair. But where is Guy
+Hardy's house? Where is the Lonergans'--the Lonergans who used to have
+the goat and wagon? How can those houses be so completely gone? Were
+they not built of timber? And what is memory built of, that it should
+outlast them? Mr. Rand's house--there it is, with its high porch! But
+where are the cherry trees? Where is the round flower bed? And what on
+earth have they been doing to the neighborhood? Why have they moved all
+the houses closer to the street and spoiled the old front yards? Then
+the heartshaking realization that they _hadn't_ moved the houses; that
+the yards were the same; that they had always been small and cramped;
+that the only change was in the eye of him who had come back.
+
+No; not the only change, but the great one. Almost all the linden trees
+that formed a line beside my grandfather's house are gone. The four
+which remain aren't large trees, after all.
+
+The vacant lot next door is blotted out by a row of cheap apartment
+houses. But there is the Borden house standing stanch, solid, austere as
+ever, behind its iron fence. How afraid we used to be of Mr. Borden! Can
+he be living still? And has he mellowed in old age?--for the spite fence
+is torn down! Next door, there, is the house in which I went to my first
+party--in a velveteen suit and wide lace collar. There was a lady at
+that party; she wore a velvet dress and was the most beautiful lady
+that I ever saw. She is several times a grandmother now--still
+beautiful.
+
+The gentleman who owns the house in which I used to live had heard I was
+in town, and was so kind as to think that it would interest me to see
+the place again.
+
+I never was more grateful to a man!
+
+The house was not so large as I had thought it. The majestic "parlor"
+had shrunk from an enormous to a normal room. But there was the wide
+hardwood banister rail, down which I used to slide, and there was the
+alcove, off the big front bedroom, where they put me when I had the
+accident; and there was the place where my crib stood. I had forgotten
+all about that crib, but suddenly I saw it, with its inclosing sides of
+walnut slats. However, it was not until I mounted to the attic that the
+strangest memories besieged me. The instant I entered the attic I knew
+the smell. In all the world there is no smell exactly like the smell
+which haunts the attic of that house. With it there came to me the
+picture of old Ellen and the recollection of a rainy day, when she set
+me to work in the attic, driving tacks into cakes of laundry soap. That
+was the day I fell downstairs and broke my collarbone.
+
+Leaving the house I went out to the alley. Ah! those beloved back fences
+and the barns in which we used to play. Where were the old colored
+coachmen who were so good to us? Where was little Ed, ex-jockey, and
+ex-slave? Where was Artis? Where was William? William must be getting
+old.
+
+At the door of his barn I paused and, not without some faint feeling of
+fear, knocked. The door opened. A young colored man stood within. He
+wore a chauffeur's cap. So the old surrey was gone! There was a motor
+now.
+
+"Where's William?" I asked.
+
+"William ain't here no more," he said.
+
+"But where is he?"
+
+"Oh, he's most generally around the alley, some place, or in some of the
+houses. He does odd jobs."
+
+"Thanks," I said and, turning, walked up the alley, fearing lest I
+should not be able to find the old colored man who, perhaps more than
+any one outside my family, was the true friend of my boyhood.
+
+Then, as I moved along, I saw him far away and recognized him by the
+familiar, slouching step. And as I walked to meet him, and as we drew
+near to each other in that long narrow alley, it seemed to me that here
+was another allegory in which the alley somehow represented life.
+
+How glad we were to meet! William looked older, his close-cropped wool
+was whiter, he stooped a little more, but he had the same old solemn
+drawl, the same lustrous dark eye with the twinkle in it, even the same
+old corncob pipe--or another like it, burned down at the edge.
+
+We stood there for a long time, exchanging news. Ed had gone down South
+with the Bakers when they moved away. Artis was on "the force."
+
+[Illustration: The bold front of Michigan Avenue along Grant Park ...
+great buildings wreathed in whirling smoke and that allegory of infinity
+which confronts one who looks eastward]
+
+"The neighborhood's changed a good bit since you was here. Lots of the
+old families have gone. I'm almost a stranger around the alley myself
+now. I must be a pretty tough old nut, the way I keep hangin' on." He
+smiled as he said that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Of course I'll see you when I come out to Chicago again," I said as we
+shook hands at parting.
+
+William looked up at the sky, much as a man will look for signs of rain.
+Then with another smile he let his eyes drift slowly downward from the
+heavens.
+
+"Well," he said in his nasal drawl, "I guess I'll see you again some
+time--some place."
+
+I turned and moved away.
+
+Then, of a sudden, a back gate swung open with a violent bang against
+the fence, and four or five boys in short trousers leaped out and ran,
+yelling, helter-skelter up the alley.
+
+I had the curious feeling that among them was the boy I used to be.
+
+
+
+
+"IN MIZZOURA"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+SOMNOLENT ST. LOUIS
+
+
+     "The moderation of prosperous people comes from the
+     calm which good fortune gives to their temper."
+
+          --LA ROCHEFOUCAULD.
+
+
+Some years ago, while riding westward through the Alleghenies in an
+observation car of the Pennsylvania Limited, a friend of mine fell into
+conversation with an old gentleman who sat in the next chair.
+
+"Evidently he knew a good deal about that region," said my friend, in
+telling me of the incident later. "We must have sat there together for a
+couple of hours. He did most of the talking; I could see that he enjoyed
+talking, and was glad to have a listener. Before he got off he shook
+hands with me and said he was glad to have had the little chat. Then,
+when he was gone, the trainman came and asked me if I knew who he was. I
+didn't. Come to find out, it was Andrew Carnegie."
+
+I asked my friend how Mr. Carnegie impressed him.
+
+"Oh," he replied, "I was much surprised when I found it had been he. He
+seemed a nice old fellow enough, kindly and affable, but a little
+commonplace. I should never have called him an 'inspired millionaire.'
+I've been reconstructing him in my mind ever since."
+
+I am reminded of my friend's experience by my own meeting with the city
+of St. Louis; for it was not until after I had left St. Louis that I
+found out "who it is." That is, I failed to focus, while there, upon the
+fact that it is America's fourth city. And now, in looking back, I feel
+about St. Louis as my friend felt about the ironmaster: I do not think
+it looks the part.
+
+St. Louis leads the world in shoes, stoves, and tobacco; it is the
+world's greatest market for hardware, lumber, and raw furs; it is the
+principal horse and mule market in America; it builds more street and
+railroad cars than any other city in the country; it distributes more
+coffee; it makes more woodenware, more native chemicals, more beer. It
+leads in all these things. But what it does not do is to _look_ as
+though it led. Physically it is a great, overgrown American town, like
+Buffalo or St. Paul. Its streets are, for the most part, lacking in
+distinction. There is no center at which a visitor might stop, knowing
+by instinct that he was at the city's heart. It is a rambling,
+incoherent place, in which one has to ask which is the principal retail
+shopping corner. Fancy having to ask a thing like that!
+
+I do not mean by this that St. Louis is much worse, in appearance, than
+some other American cities. For American cities, as I have said before,
+have only recently awakened to the need of broadly planned municipal
+beauty. All I mean is that St. Louis seems to be behind in taking action
+to improve herself.
+
+Almost every city presents a paradox, if you will but find it. The St.
+Louis paradox is that she is a fashionable city without style. But that
+is not, in reality, the paradox, it seems. It only means that being an
+old, aristocratic city, with a wealthy and cosmopolitan population, and
+an extraordinarily cultivated social life, St. Louis yet lacks municipal
+distinction. It is a dowdy city. It needs to be taken by the hand and
+led around to some municipal-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasher,
+who will dress it like the gentleman it really is.
+
+I remember a well-to-do old man who used to be like that. His daughters
+were obliged to drag him down to get new clothes. Always he insisted
+that the old frock coat was plenty good enough; that he couldn't spare
+time and the money for a new one. Nevertheless, he could well afford new
+clothes, and so can St. Louis. The city debt is relatively small, and
+there are only two American cities of over 350,000 population which have
+a lower tax-rate. These two are San Francisco and Cleveland. And either
+one of them can set a good example to St. Louis, in the matter of
+self-improvement. San Francisco, with a population hardly more than half
+that of St. Louis, is yet an infinitely more important-looking city;
+while Minneapolis or Denver might impress a casual visitor, roaming
+their streets, as being equal to St. Louis in commerce and population,
+although the Missouri metropolis is, in reality, considerably greater
+than the two combined. However, in considering the foibles of an old
+city we should be lenient, as in considering those of an old man.
+
+Old men and old cities did not enjoy, in their youth, the advantages
+which are enjoyed to-day by young men and young cities. Life was harder,
+and precedent, in many lines, was wanting. Excepting in a few rare
+instances, as, for example, in Detroit and Savannah, the laying out of
+cities seems to have been taken care of, in the early days, as much by
+cows as men. Look at Boston, or lower New York, or St. Paul, or St.
+Louis. How little did the men who founded those cities dream of the
+proportions to which they would some day attain! With cities which have
+begun to develop within the last fifty or sixty years, it has been
+different, for there has been precedent to show them what is possible
+when an American city really starts to grow. To-day all American cities,
+even down to the smallest towns, have a sneaking suspicion that they may
+some day become great, too--great, that is, by comparison with what they
+are. And those which are not altogether lacking in energy are prepared,
+at least in a small way, to encounter greatness when, at last, it comes.
+
+Baedeker says St. Louis was founded as a fur-trading station by the
+French in 1756. "All About St. Louis," a publication compiled by the St.
+Louis Advertising Men's League, gives the date 1764. Pierre Laclede was
+the founder, and it is interesting to note that some of his descendants
+still reside there.
+
+When Louis XV ceded the territory to the east of the Mississippi to the
+English, he also ceded the west bank to Spain by secret treaty. Spanish
+authority was established in St. Louis in 1770, but in 1804 the town
+became a part of the United States, as a portion of the Louisiana
+Purchase.
+
+[Illustration: The dilapidation of the quarter has continued steadily
+from Dickens's day to this, and the beauty now to be discovered there is
+that of decay and ruin]
+
+In the old days the city had but three streets: the Rue Royale, one
+block back from the levee (now Main Street); the Rue de l'Eglise, or
+Church Street (now Second); and the Rue des Granges, or Barn Street (now
+Third).
+
+Though a few of the old French houses, in a woeful state of
+dilapidation, may still be seen in this neighborhood, it is now for the
+most part given over to commission merchants, warehouses, and slums.
+
+Charles Dickens, writing of St. Louis in 1842, describes this quarter:
+
+    "In the old French portion of the town the thoroughfares are narrow and
+    crooked, and some of the houses are very quaint and picturesque: being
+    built of wood, with tumble-down galleries before the windows,
+    approachable by stairs or rather ladders from the street. There are
+    queer little barbers' shops and drinking houses, too, in this quarter;
+    and abundance of crazy old tenements with blinking casements, such as
+    may be seen in Flanders. Some of these ancient habitations, with high
+    garret gable windows perking into the roofs, have a kind of French
+    shrug about them; and, being lopsided with age, appear to hold their
+    heads askew, besides, as if they were grimacing in astonishment at the
+    American improvements.
+
+    "It is hardly necessary to say that these consist of wharves and
+    warehouses and new buildings in all directions; and of a great
+    many vast plans which are still 'progressing.' Already, however,
+    some very good houses, broad streets, and marble-fronted shops
+    have gone so far ahead as to be in a state of completion, and the
+    town bids fair in a few years to improve considerably; though it
+    is not likely ever to vie, in point of elegance or beauty, with
+    Cincinnati.... The Roman Catholic religion, introduced here by
+    the early French settlers, prevails extensively. Among the public
+    institutions are a Jesuit college, a convent for 'the Ladies of
+    the Sacred Heart,' and a large chapel attached to the college,
+    which was in course of erection at the time of my visit.... The
+    architect of this building is one of the reverend fathers.... The
+    organ will be sent from Belgium.... In addition to these
+    establishments there is a Roman Catholic cathedral.
+
+    "No man ever admits the unhealthiness of the place he dwells in
+    (unless he is going away from it), and I shall therefore, I have
+    no doubt, be at issue with the inhabitants of St. Louis in
+    questioning the perfect salubrity of its climate.... It is very
+    hot...."
+
+The cathedral of which Dickens wrote remains, perhaps the most sturdy
+building in the section which forms the old town. It is a
+venerable-looking pile of gray granite, built to last forever, and
+suggesting, with its French inscriptions and its exotic look, a bit of
+old Quebec. But for the most part the dilapidation of the quarter has
+continued steadily from Dickens's day to this, and the beauty now to be
+discovered there is that of decay and ruin--pathetic beauty to charm the
+etcher, but sadden the lover of improvement, whose battle cry invariably
+involves the overworked word "civic."
+
+An exception to the general slovenliness of this quarter is to be seen
+in the old Merchants' Exchange Hall on Main Street. Built nearly sixty
+years ago, this building, now disused and dilapidated, nevertheless
+shows a facade of a distinction rare in structures of its time. I was
+surprised to discover that this old hall was not better known in St.
+Louis, and I cheerfully recommend it to the notice of those who esteem
+the architecture of the Jefferson Memorial, the bulky new cathedral on
+Lindell Boulevard, or that residence, suggestive of the hanging gardens
+of Babylon, at Hortense Place and King's Highway. Take the old
+Merchants' Exchange Hall away from dirty, cobbled Main Street, set it
+up, instead, in Venice, beside the Grand Canal, and watch the tourist
+from St. Louis stop his gondola to gaze!
+
+But what city has respected its ruins? Rome used her palaces as mines
+for building material. St. Louis destroyed the wonderful old mound which
+used to stand at the corner of Mound Street and Broadway, forming one of
+the most interesting archeological remains in the country and, together
+with smaller mounds near by, giving St. Louis her title of "Mound City."
+
+With Dickens's statements concerning the St. Louis summer climate, the
+publication, "All About St. Louis," does not, for one moment, agree. In
+it I find an article headed: "St. Louis has Better Weather than Other
+Cities," the preamble to which contains the following solemn truth:
+
+     The weather question is purely local and individual. Every person
+     forms his own opinion about the weather by the way it affects him,
+     wherever he happens to be.
+
+Having made that clear, the writer becomes more specific. He informs us
+that, in St. Louis, "the prevailing winds in summer blow over the Ozark
+Mountains, insuring cool nights and pleasant days." Also that "during
+the summer the temperature does not run so high, and warm spells do not
+last so long as in many cities of the North." The latter statement is
+supported--as almost every statement in the world, it seems to me, can
+be supported--by statistics. What wonderful things statistics are! How I
+wish Charles Dickens might have seen these. How surprised he would have
+been. How surprised I was--for I, too, have visited St. Louis in the
+middle of the year. Yes, and so has my companion. He went to St. Louis
+several years ago to attend the Democratic National Convention, but he
+is all right again now.
+
+I showed him the statistics.
+
+"Why!" he cried. "I ought to have been told of this before!"
+
+"What for?" I demanded.
+
+"If I had had this information at the time of the convention," he
+declared, "I'd have known enough not to have been laid up in bed for six
+weeks with heat prostration."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Though the downtown portion of St. Louis is, as I have said, lacking in
+coherence and distinction, there are, nevertheless, a number of
+buildings in that section which are, for one reason or another, notable.
+The old Courthouse, on Chestnut and Market Streets, between Fourth and
+Fifth, is getting well along toward its centennial, and is interesting,
+both as a dignified old granite pile and as the scene of the whipping
+post, and of slave sales which were held upon its steps during the Civil
+War.
+
+Not far from the old Courthouse stands another building typifying all
+that is modern--the largest office building in the world, a highly
+creditable structure, occupying an entire city block, built from designs
+by St. Louis architects: Mauran, Russell & Crowell. Another building,
+notable for its beauty, is the Central Public Library, a very simple,
+well-proportioned building of gray granite, designed by Cass Gilbert.
+
+The St. Louis Union Station is interesting for several reasons. When
+built, it was the largest station in the world--one of the first great
+stations of the modern type. It contains, under its roof, five and a
+half miles of track, and though it has been surpassed, architecturally,
+by some more recent stations, it is still a spectacular building--or
+rather it would be, were it not for its setting, among narrow streets,
+lined with cheap saloons, lunch rooms, and lodging houses. That any city
+capable of building such a splendid terminal could, at the same time, be
+capable of leaving it in such environment is a thing baffling to the
+comprehension. It must, however, be said that efforts have been made to
+improve this condition. Six or seven years ago the Civic League proposed
+to buy the property facing the station and turn it into a park. St.
+Louis somnolence defeated this project. The City Plan Commission now has
+a more elaborate suggestion which, if accepted, will not only place the
+station in a proper setting, but also reclaim a large area, in the
+geographical center of the city, which has suffered a blight, and which
+is steadily deteriorating, although through it run the chief lines of
+travel between the business and residence portions of the city.
+
+This project, if put through, will be a fine step toward the creation,
+in downtown St. Louis, of some outward indication of the real importance
+of the city. The plan involves the gutting of a strip, one block wide
+and two miles long; the tearing out of everything between Market and
+Chestnut Streets, all the way from Twelfth Street, which is the eastern
+boundary of the City Hall Square, to Grand Avenue on the west. Here it
+is proposed to construct a Central Traffic Parkway, which will pass
+directly in front of the station, connecting it with both the business
+and residence districts, and will also pass in front of the Municipal
+Court Building and the City Hall, located farther downtown. The plan
+involves an arrangement similar to that of the Champs-Elysees, with a
+wide central drive, parked on either side, for swift-moving vehicles,
+and exterior roads for heavy traffic.
+
+An expert in such work has said that "city planning has few functions
+more important than the restoration of impaired property values."
+American cities are coming to comprehend that investment in
+intelligently planned improvements, such as this, have to do not only
+with city dignity and city self-respect, but that they pay for
+themselves. If St. Louis wants to find that out, she has but to visit
+her western neighbor, Kansas City, where the construction of Paseo
+boulevard did redeem a blighted district, transforming it into an
+excellent neighborhood, doubling or trebling the value of adjacent
+property, and, of course, yielding the city increased revenue from
+taxes.
+
+A matter more deplorable than the setting of the station is the
+unparalleled situation which exists with regard to the Free Bridge.
+Though the echoes of this scandal have been heard, more or less,
+throughout the country, it is perhaps necessary to give a brief summary
+of the matter as it stands at present.
+
+The three used bridges which cross the Mississippi River at St. Louis
+are privately controlled toll bridges. Working people, passing to and
+fro, are obliged to pay a five-cent toll in excess of car fare. Goods
+are also taxed. It was with the purpose of defeating this monopoly that
+the Free Bridge was constructed. But after the body of the bridge was
+built, factional fights developed as to the placing of approaches, and
+as a result, the approaches have never been built. Thus, the bridge
+stands to-day, as it has stood for several years, a thing costly,
+grotesque, and useless, spanning the river, its two ends jutting out,
+inanely, over the opposing shores. In the meantime the city is paying
+interest on the bridge bonds at the rate of something over $300 per day.
+The question of approaches has come before the city at several
+elections, but the people have so far failed to vote the necessary
+bonds. The history of the voting on this subject plainly shows
+indifference. In one election the Twenty-eighth Ward, which is the rich
+and fashionable ward, cast only 2,325 votes, on the bridge question, out
+of a possible 6,732. Had the eligible voters of this ward, alone, done
+their duty, the issue would have been carried at the time, and the
+bridge would now be in operation.
+
+One becomes accustomed to exhibitions of municipal indifference upon
+matters involving questions like reform, which, though they are not
+really abstract, often seem so to the average voter. Reforms are,
+relatively at least, invisible things. But the Free Bridge is not
+invisible. Far from it! There it stands above the stream, a grim,
+gargantuan joke, for every man to see--a tin can tied to a city's tail.
+
+[Illustration: The three used bridges which cross the Mississippi River
+at St. Louis are privately controlled toll bridges]
+
+In writing of St. Louis I feel, somehow, like a man who has been at a
+delightful house party where people have been very kind to him, and who,
+when he goes away, promulgates unpleasant truths about bad plumbing in
+the house. Yet, of course, St. Louis is a public place, to which I went
+with the avowed purpose of writing my impressions. The reader may be
+glad, at this point, to learn that some of my impressions are of a
+pleasant nature. But before I reach them I must rake a little further
+through this substance, which, I am becoming very much afraid, resembles
+"muck."
+
+St. Louis has, for some time, been involved in a fight with the United
+Railways Company, a corporation controlling the street car system of the
+city. In one quarter I was informed that this company was paying
+dividends on millions of watered stock, and that it had been reported by
+the Public Service Commission as earning more than a million a year in
+excess of a reasonable return on its investment. In another quarter,
+while it was not denied that the company was overburdened with
+obligations representing much more than the actual value of the present
+system, it was explained that the so-called "water" represented the cost
+of the early horse-car system, discarded on the advent of the cable
+lines, and also the cost of the cable lines which were, in turn,
+discarded for the trolley. It was furthermore contended that, in the
+days before the formation of the United Railways Company, when several
+companies were striving for territory, the street railroads of St.
+Louis were overbuilt, with the result that much money was sunk.
+
+In an article on St. Louis, recently published in "Collier's Weekly," I
+made the statement that the street car service of St. Louis was as bad
+as I had ever seen; that the tracks were rough, the cars run-down and
+dirty, and that an antediluvian heating system was used, namely, a
+red-hot stove at one end of the car, giving but small comfort to those
+far removed from it, and fairly cooking those who sat near.
+
+This statement brought some protest from St. Louis. Several persons
+wrote to me saying that the cars were not dirty, that only a few of them
+were heated with stoves, and that the tracks were in good condition.
+With one of these correspondents, Mr. Walter B. Stevens, I exchanged
+several letters. I informed him that I had ridden in five different
+cars, that all five were heated as mentioned, that they were dirty and
+needed painting, and that I recalled distinctly the fact that the
+rail-joints caused a continual jarring of the car.
+
+Mr. Stevens replied as follows:
+
+"In your street car trip to the southwestern part of the city you saw
+probably the worst part of the system. Some of the lines, notably those
+in the section of the city mentioned by you, have not been brought up to
+the standard that prevails elsewhere. I have traveled on street cars in
+most of the large cities of this country, north and south, and according
+to my observation, the lines in the central part of St. Louis,
+extending westward, are not surpassed anywhere."
+
+As I have reason to know that Mr. Stevens is an exceedingly fair-minded
+gentleman, I am glad of the opportunity to print his statement here. I
+must add, however, that I think a street car system on which a stranger,
+taking five different cars, finds them all heated by stoves, leaves
+something to be desired. Let me say further that I might not have been
+so critical of the St. Louis street railways and its cars, had I not
+become acquainted, a short time before, with the Twin City Rapid Transit
+Company, which operates the street railways of Minneapolis and St. Paul:
+a system which, as a casual observer, I should call the most perfect of
+its kind I have seen in the United States.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"What is the matter with St. Louis?" I inquired of a wide-awake citizen
+I met.
+
+"Oh, the Drew Question," he suggested with a smile.
+
+"The Drew Question?" I repeated blankly.
+
+"You don't know about that? Well, the question you asked was put to the
+city, some years ago, by Alderman Drew, so instead of asking it outright
+any more, we refer to it as 'the Drew Question,' Every one knows what it
+means."
+
+The man who asks that question in St. Louis will receive a wide variety
+of answers.
+
+One exceedingly well-informed gentleman told me that St. Louis had the
+"most aggressive minority" he had ever seen. "Start any movement here,"
+he declared, "and, whatever it may be, you immediately encounter strong
+objection."
+
+In other quarters I learned of something called "The Big Cinch"--an
+intangible, reactionary sort of dragon, said to be built of big business
+men. It is charged that this legendary monster has put the quietus upon
+various enterprises, including the construction of a new and first-class
+hotel--something which St. Louis needs. In still other quarters I was
+informed that the city's long-established wealth had placed it in
+somewhat the position of Detroit before the days of the automobile, and
+that much of the money and many of the big business enterprises were
+controlled by elderly men; in short, that what is needed is young blood,
+or, as one man put it, "a few important funerals."
+
+"It is conservatism," explained another. "The trouble with St. Louis is
+that nobody here ever goes crazy." And said still another: "About
+one-third of the population of St. Louis is German. It is German
+lethargy that holds the city back."
+
+Whatever truth may lurk in these several statements, I do not,
+personally, believe in the last one. If the Germans are sometimes
+stolid, they are upon the other hand honest, thoughtful, and steady. And
+when it comes to lethargy--well, Chicago, the most active great city in
+the country, has a large German population. And, for the matter of that,
+so has Berlin! Some of the best citizens St. Louis has are Germans, and
+one of her most public-spirited and nationally distinguished men was
+born in Prussia--Mr. Frederick W. Lehmann, former Solicitor General of
+the United States and ex-president of the American Bar Association. Mr.
+Lehmann (who served the country as a commissioner in the cause of peace
+with Mexico, at the Niagara Falls conference) drew up a city charter
+which was recommended by the Board of Freeholders of St. Louis in 1910.
+This charter was defeated. However, another charter, embodying many even
+more progressive elements than those contained in the charter proposed
+by Mr. Lehmann, has lately been accepted by the city, and there can be
+little doubt that the earlier proposals paved the way for this one. The
+new charter had not been passed at the time of my visit. The St. Louis
+newspapers which I have seen since are, however, most sanguine in their
+prophecies as to what will be accomplished under it. All seem to agree
+that its acceptance marks the awakening of the city.
+
+German emigration to St. Louis began about 1820 and increased at the
+time of the rebellion of 1848, so that, like Milwaukee, St. Louis has
+to-day a very strong German flavor. By the terms of the city charter all
+ordinances and municipal legal advertising are printed in both English
+and German, and the "Westliche Post" of St. Louis, a German newspaper
+founded by the late Emil Pretorius and now conducted by his son, is a
+powerful organ. The great family beer halls of the city add further
+Teutonic color, and the Liederkranz is, I believe, the largest club in
+the city. This organization is not much like a club according to the
+restricted English idea; it suggests some great, genial public gathering
+place. The substantial German citizens who arrive here of a Sunday
+night, when the cook goes out, do not come alone, nor merely with their
+sons, but bring their entire families for dinner, including the mother,
+the daughters, and the little children. There is music, of course, and
+great contentment. The place breathes of substantiality, democracy, and
+good nature. You feel it even in the manner of the waiters, who, being
+first of all human beings, second, Germans, and waiters only in the
+third place, have an air of personal friendliness with those they serve.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Aside from his municipal and national activities, Mr. Lehmann has found
+time to gather in his home one of the most complete collections of
+Dickens's first editions and related publications to be found in the
+whole world. It is, indeed, on this side--the side of cultivation--that
+St. Louis is most truly charming. She has an old, exclusive, and
+delightful society, and a widespread and pleasantly unostentatious
+interest in esthetic things. In fact, I do not know of any American
+city, to which St. Louis may with justice be compared, possessing a
+larger body of collectors, nor collections showing more individual
+taste. The most important private collections in the city are, I
+believe, those of Mr. William K. Bixby, who owns a great number of
+valuable paintings by old masters, and a large collection of rare books
+and manuscripts. As a book collector, Mr. Bixby is widely known
+throughout the country, and he has had, if I mistake not, the honor of
+being president of that Chicago club of bibliolatrists, known as the
+"Dofobs," or "damned old fools over books."
+
+An exhibition of paintings owned in St. Louis is held annually in the
+St. Louis Museum of Art, and leaves no doubt as to the genuineness of
+the interest of St. Louis citizens in painting. Nor can any one,
+considering the groups of canvases loaned to the museum for the annual
+exhibition, doubt that certain art collectors in St. Louis (Mr. Edward
+A. Faust, for example) are buying not only names but paintings.
+
+The Art Museum is less accessible to the general citizen than are
+museums in some other cities. Having been originally the central hall of
+the group of buildings devoted to art at the time of the Louisiana
+Purchase Exposition, it stands in that part of Forest Park which was
+formerly the Fair ground. Posed, as it is, upon a hill, in a commanding
+and conspicuous position, it reveals, somewhat unfortunately, the fact
+that it is the isolated fragment of a former group. Nevertheless, it
+must take a high place among the secondary art museums of the United
+States. For despite the embarrassment caused by the possession of a good
+deal of mediocre sculpture, a legacy from the World's Fair, which is
+packed in its central hall; and despite the inheritance, from twenty or
+twenty-five years since, of vapid canvases by Bouguereau, Gabriel Max,
+and other painters of past popularity, whose works are rapidly coming to
+be known for what they are--despite these handicaps, the museum is now
+distinctly in step with the march of modern art. The old collection is
+being weeded out, and good judgment is being shown in the selection of
+new canvases. Like the Albright Gallery in Buffalo, the St. Louis Museum
+of Art is rapidly acquiring works by some of the best American painters
+of to-day, having purchased within the last four or five years canvases
+by Redfield, Loeb, Symons, Waugh, Dearth, Dougherty, Foster, and others.
+
+Another building saved from the World's Fair is the superb central hall
+of Washington University, a red granite structure in the English
+collegiate style, designed by Cope & Stewardson. The dozen or more
+buildings of this university are very fine in their harmony, and are
+pronounced by Baedeker "certainly the most successful and appropriate
+group of collegiate buildings in the New World."
+
+It is curious to note in this connection that there are eight colleges
+or universities in the United States in which the name of "Washington"
+appears; among them, Washington University at St. Louis; Washington
+College at Chestertown, Md.; George Washington University at Washington,
+D. C.; Washington State College at Pullman, Wash., and the University of
+Washington at Seattle.
+
+[Illustration: The skins are handled in the raw state ... with the
+result that the floor of the exchange is made slippery by animal fats,
+and that the olfactory organs encounter smells not to be matched in any
+zoo]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE FINER SIDE
+
+
+Before making my transcontinental pilgrimage I used to wonder,
+sometimes, just where the line dividing East from West in the United
+States might be. When I lived in Chicago, and went out to St. Louis, I
+felt that I was going, not merely in a westerly direction, but that I
+was actually going out into the "West." I knew, of course, that there
+was a vast amount of "West" lying beyond St. Louis, but I had no real
+conception--and no one who has not seen it can have--of what a
+stupendous, endless, different kind of land it is. St. Louis west? It is
+not west at all. To be sure, it is the frontier, the jumping-off place,
+but it is no more western in its characteristics than the city of
+Boulogne is English because it faces England, just across the way. From
+every point of view except that of geography, Chicago is more western
+than St. Louis. For Chicago has more "wallop" than St. Louis, and
+"wallop" is essentially a western attribute. "Wallop" St. Louis has not.
+What she has is civilization and the eastern spirit of laissez-faire.
+And that of St. Louis which is not of the east is of the south. Her
+society has a strong southern flavor, many of her leading families
+having come originally from Kentucky and Virginia. The Southern
+"colonel" type is to be found there, too--black, broad-brimmed hat,
+frock coat, goatee, and all--and there is a negro population big enough
+to give him his customary background.
+
+Much negro labor is employed for the rougher kind of work; colored
+waiters serve in the hotels, and many families employ colored servants.
+As is usual in cities where this is true, the accent of the people
+inclines somewhat to be southern. Or, perhaps, it is a blending of the
+accent of the south with the sharper drawl of the west. Then, too, I
+encountered there men bearing French names (which are pronounced in the
+French manner, although the city's name has been anglicized, being
+pronounced "Saint Louiss") who, if they did not speak with a real French
+accent, had, at least, slight mannerisms of speech which were
+unmistakably of French origin. I noted down a number of French family
+names I heard: Chauvenet, Papin, Valle, Desloge, De Menil, Lucas,
+Pettus, Guion, Chopin, Janis, Benoist, Cabanne, and Chouteau--the latter
+family descended, I was told, from Laclede himself. And again, I heard
+such names as Busch, Lehmann, Faust, and Niedringhaus; and still again
+such other names as Kilpatrick, Farrell, and O'Fallon--for St. Louis,
+though a Southern city, and an Eastern city, and a French city, and a
+German city, by being also Irish, proves herself American.
+
+It is in all that has to do with family life that St. Louis comes off
+best. She has miles upon miles of prosperous-looking, middle-class
+residence streets, and the system of residence "places" in her more
+fashionable districts is highly characteristic. These "places" are in
+reality long, narrow parkways, with double drives, parked down the
+center, and bordered with houses at their outer margins. The oldest of
+them is, I am told, Benton Place, on the South Side, but the more
+attractive ones are to the westward, near Forest Park. Of these the
+first was Vandeventer Place, which still contains some of the most
+pleasant and substantial residences of the city, and it may be added
+that while some of the newer "places" have more recent and elaborate
+houses than those on Vandeventer Place, the general average of recent
+domestic architecture in St. Louis is behind that of many other cities.
+Portland Place seemed, upon the whole, to have the best group of modern
+houses. Westmoreland and Kingsbury Places also have agreeable homes. But
+Washington Terrace is not so fortunate; its houses, though they plainly
+indicate liberal expenditure of money, are often of that
+"catch-as-catch-can" kind of architecture which one meets with but too
+frequently in the middle west. If St. Louis is western in one thing more
+than another it is the architecture of her houses. Not that they lack
+solidity but that on the average they are not to be compared,
+architecturally, with houses of corresponding modernness in such cities
+as Chicago or Detroit. The more I see of other cities the more, indeed,
+I appreciate the new domestic architecture of Detroit. And I cannot help
+feeling that it is curious that St. Louis should be behind Detroit in
+this particular when she is, as a city, so far superior in her evident
+understanding and love of art.
+
+Nevertheless, St. Louis has one architect whom she cannot honor too
+highly--Mr. William B. Ittner, who, as a designer of schools, stands
+unsurpassed.
+
+If ever I have seen a building perfect for its purpose, that building is
+the Frank Louis Soldan High School, designed by this man. It is the last
+word in schools; a building for the city of St. Louis to be proud of,
+and for the whole country to rejoice in. It has everything a school can
+have, including that quality rarest of all in schools--sheer beauty. It
+is worth a whole chapter in itself, from its great auditorium, which is
+like a very simple opera house, seating two thousand persons, to its
+tiled lunch rooms with their "cafeteria" service. An architect could
+build one school like that, it seems to me, and then lie down and die
+content, feeling that his work was done. But Mr. Ittner apparently is
+not satisfied so easily as I should be, for he goes gaily on building
+other schools. If there isn't one to be built in St. Louis at the moment
+(and the city has an extraordinary number of fine school buildings), he
+goes off to some other city and puts a school up there. And for every
+one he builds he ought to have a crown of gold.
+
+[Illustration: St. Louis needs to be taken by the hand and led around
+to some municipal-improvement tailor, some civic haberdasher]
+
+Mr. John Rush Powell, the principal of the high school, was so good as
+to take my companion and me over the building. We envied Mr. Powell the
+privilege of being housed in such a palace, and Mr. Powell, in his turn,
+tried to talk temperately about the wonders of his school, and was so
+polite as to let us do the raving.
+
+Do you remember, when you went to school, the long closet, or dressing
+room, where you used to hang your coat and hat? The boys and girls of
+the Soldan School have steel lockers in a sunlit locker room. Do you
+remember the old wooden floors? These boys and girls have wooden floors
+to walk on, but the wood is quarter-sawed oak, and it is laid in asphalt
+over concrete, which makes the finest kind of floor. Do you remember the
+ugly old school building? The front of this one looks like Hampden Court
+Palace, brought up to date. Do you remember the big classroom that
+served almost every purpose? This school has separate rooms for
+everything--a greenhouse for the botanists, great studios, with
+skylights, for those who study art, a music hall, and private offices,
+beside the classrooms, for instructors. Oh, you ought to see this school
+yourself, and learn how schools have changed! You ought to see the
+domestic science kitchen with its twenty-four gas ranges and the model
+dining room, where the girls give dinner parties for their parents; the
+sewing room and fitting rooms, and the laundries, with sanitary
+equipment and electric irons--for every girl who takes the
+domestic-science course must know how to do fine laundry work, even to
+the washing of flannels.
+
+You should see the manual-training shops, and the business college, and
+the textile work, and the kilns for pottery, and the very creditable
+drawings and paintings of the art students (who clearly have a competent
+teacher--again an unusual thing in schools), and the simple beauty of
+the corridors, so free from decoration, and the library--like that of a
+club--and the lavatories, as perfect as those in fine hotels, and the
+pictures on the classroom walls--good prints of good things, like
+Whistler's portrait of his mother, instead of the old hideosities of
+Washington and Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes, which used to hang
+on classroom walls in our school days. Oh, it is good to merely breathe
+the air of such a school--and why shouldn't it be, since the air is
+washed, and screened, and warmed, and fanned out to the rooms and
+corridors? Just think of that one thing, and then try to remember how
+schools used to smell--that rather zoological odor of dirty little boys
+and dirty little slates. That was one thing which struck me very
+forcibly about this school: it didn't smell like one. Yet, until I went
+there, I should have wagered that if I were taken blindfold to a school,
+led inside, and allowed a single whiff of it, I should immediately
+detect the place for what it was. Ah, memories of other days! Ah, sacred
+smells of childhood! Can it be that the school smell has gone forever
+from the earth--that it has vanished with our youth--that the rising
+generation may not know it? There is but little sadness in the thought.
+
+Having thus dilated upon the oldtime smell of schools, I find myself
+drifting, perhaps through an association of ideas, to another
+subject--that of furs; raw furs.
+
+The firm of Funsten Brothers & Co. have made St. Louis the largest
+primary fur market in the world. They operate a fur exchange which,
+though a private business, is conducted somewhat after the manner of a
+produce exchange. That is to say, the sales are not open to all buyers,
+but to about thirty men who are, in effect, "members," it being required
+that a member be a fur dealer with a place of business in St. Louis.
+These men are jobbers, and they sell in turn to the manufacturers.
+
+Funsten Brothers & Co. work direct with trappers, and are in
+correspondence, I am informed, with between 700,000 and 800,000 persons,
+engaged in trapping and shipping furs, in all parts of the world. Their
+business has been considerably increased of late years by the
+installation of a trappers' information bureau and supply department for
+the accommodation of those who send them furs, and also by the marketing
+of artificial animal baits. In this way, and further by making it a rule
+to send checks in payment for furs received from trappers, on the same
+day shipments arrive, this company has built up for itself an enormous
+good will at the original sources of supply.
+
+The furs come from every State in the Union, from every Province in
+Canada, and from Alaska, being shipped in, during the trapping season,
+at the rate of about two thousand lots a day, these lots containing
+anywhere from five to five hundred pelts each.
+
+The lots are sorted, arranged in batches according to quality, and
+auctioned off at sales, which are held three days a week. Even
+Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Florida, and Texas supply furs, but the
+furs from the north are in general the most valuable. This is not true,
+however, of muskrat, the best of which comes from the central and
+eastern States.
+
+The sales are conducted in the large hall of the exchange, where the
+lots of furs are displayed in great piles. The skins are handled in the
+raw state, having been merely removed from the carcass and dried before
+shipment, with the result that the floor of the exchange is made
+slippery by animal fats, and that the olfactory organs encounter smells
+not to be matched in any zoo--or school--the blended fragrance of
+raccoon, mink, opossum, muskrat, ermine, ringtail, house cat, wolf, red
+fox, gray fox, cross fox, swift fox, silver fox, badger, otter, beaver,
+lynx, marten, bear, wolverine, fisher--a great orchestra of odors, in
+which the "air" is carried most competently, most unqualifiedly, by that
+master virtuoso of mephitic redolence, the skunk.
+
+I was told that about sixty-five per cent of all North American furs
+pass through this exchange; also I received the rather surprising
+information that the greatest number of skins furnished by this
+continent comes from within a radius of five hundred miles of St.
+Louis.
+
+It was in this Fur Exchange that the first auction of government seal
+skins ever held by the United States on its own territory, occurred last
+year. Before that time it had been the custom of the government to send
+Alaskan sealskins to Europe, where they were cured and dyed. Such of
+these skins as were returned to the United States, after having
+undergone curing and dyeing, came back under a duty of 20 per cent., or
+more recently, by an increase in the tariff--30 per cent. And all but a
+very few of the skins did come back. It was by action of Secretary of
+Commerce Redfield that the seal sale was transferred from London to St.
+Louis, and a member of the firm of Funsten Brothers & Co. informed me
+that the ultimate result will be that seal coats now costing, say,
+$1,200, may be bought for about $400 three years hence, when the seals
+will no longer be protected according to the present law.
+
+Some interesting information with regard to sealing was published in the
+St. Louis "Republic" at the time of the sale. Quoting Mr. Philip B.
+Fouke, president of the Funsten Co., the "Republic" says:
+
+"Under the present policy of the Government the United States will get
+the dyeing, curing, and manufacturing establishments from London,
+Amsterdam, Nizhni Novgorod, and other great centers. The price of
+sealskins will be reduced two-thirds to the wearer. Seals have been
+protected for the past two years, and will be protected for three years
+more, but during the period of protection it is necessary for the
+Government hunters to kill some of the 'bachelor seals'--males, without
+mates, who fight with other male seals for the possession of the
+females, destroying the young, and causing much trouble. Also a certain
+amount of seal meat must go to the natives for food.
+
+"Each female produces but one pup a year, and each male demands from
+twenty to one hundred females. Fights between males for the possession
+of the females are fearful combats.
+
+"In addition to protecting the seals on the Pribilof Islands, the United
+States has entered into an agreement with Japan, Russia, and England,
+that there shall be no sealing in the open seas for fifteen years. This
+open sea, or pelagic sealing did great harm. Only the females leave the
+land, where they can be protected, and go down to the open sea.
+Consequently the poachers got many females, destroying the young seals
+as well as the mothers, cutting off the source of supply, and leaving a
+preponderance of 'bachelors,' or useless males."
+
+What a chance for the writer of sex stories! Why dally with the human
+race when seals are living such a lurid life? Here is a brand-new field:
+The heroine a soft-eyed female with a hide like velvet; the hero a
+dashing, splashing male. Sweet communions on the rocks at sunset, and
+long swims side by side. But one night on the cliffs, beneath the moon
+comes the blond beast of a bachelor, a seal absolutely unscrupulous and
+of the lowest animal impulses. Then the climax--the Jack London stuff:
+the fight on the edge of the cliff; the cry, the body hurtling to the
+rocks below. And, of course, a happy ending--love on a cake of ice.
+
+Old John Jacob Astor, founder of the Astor fortune, was a partner in the
+American Fur Company of St. Louis of which Pierre Chouteau was
+president. A letter written to Chouteau by Astor just before his
+retirement from the fur business gives as the reason for his withdrawal
+the following:
+
+     I very much fear beaver will not sell very well very soon unless
+     very fine. It appears that they make hats of silk in place of
+     beaver.
+
+Beaver was at that time the most valuable skin, and had been used until
+then for the making of tall hats; but the French were beginning to make
+silk hats, and Astor believed that in that fact was presaged the
+downfall of the beaver trade.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Club life in St. Louis is very highly developed. There are of course the
+usual clubs which one expects to find in every large city: The St. Louis
+Club, a solid old organization; the University Club, and a fine new
+Country Club, large and well designed. Also there is a Racquet Club, an
+agreeable and very live institution now holding the national
+championship in double racquets, which is vested in the team of Davis
+and Wear. The Davis of this pair is Dwight F. Davis, an exceedingly
+active and able young man who, aside from many other interests, is a
+member of the City Plan Commission, commissioner in charge of the very
+excellent parks of St. Louis, and giver of the famous Davis Cup,
+emblematic of the world's team tennis championship.
+
+But the characteristic club note of St. Louis is struck by the very
+small, exclusive clubs. One is the Florissant Valley Country Club, with
+a pleasant, simple clubhouse and a very charming membership. But the
+most famous little club of the city, and one of the most famous in the
+United States, is the Log Cabin Club. I do not believe that in the
+entire country there is another like it. The club is on the outskirts of
+the city, and has its own golf course. Its house is an utterly
+unostentatious frame building with a dining room containing a single
+table at which all the members sit at meals together, like one large
+family. The membership limit is twenty-five, and the list has never been
+completely filled. There were twenty-one members, I was told, at the
+time we were there, and besides being, perhaps, the most prominent men
+in the city, these gentlemen are all intimates, so that the club has an
+air of delightful informality which is hardly equaled in any other club
+I know. The family spirit is further enhanced by the fact that no checks
+are signed, the expense of operation being divided equally among the
+members. Here originated the "Log Cabin game" of poker, which is now
+known nationally in the most exalted poker circles. I should like to
+explain this game to you, telling you all the hands, and how to bet on
+them, but after an evening of practical instruction, I came away quite
+baffled. Missouri is, you know, a poker State. Ordinary poker, as played
+in the east, is a game too simple, too childlike, for the highly
+specialized Missouri poker mind. I played poker twice in Missouri--that
+is, I tried to play--but I might as well have tried to juggle with the
+lightnings of the gods. No man has the least conception of that game
+until he goes out to Missouri. There it is not merely a casual pastime;
+it is a rite, a sacrament, a magnificent expression of a people. The Log
+Cabin game is a thing of "kilters," skip-straights, around-the-corner
+straights, and other complications. Three of a kind is very nearly
+worthless. Throw it away after the draw if you like, pay a dollar and
+get a brand-new hand.
+
+But those are some simple little points to be picked up in an evening's
+play, and a knowledge of the simple little points of such a game is
+worse than worthless--it is expensive. To really learn the Log Cabin
+game, you must give up your business, your dancing, and your home life,
+move out to St. Louis, cultivate Log Cabin members (who are the high
+priests of poker) and play with them until your family fortune has been
+painlessly extracted. And however great the fortune, it is a small price
+to pay for such adept instruction. When it is gone you will still fall
+short of ordinary Missouri poker, and will be as a mere babe in the
+hands of a Log Cabin member, but you will be absolutely sure of winning,
+_anywhere outside the State_.
+
+It seems logical that the city, which is beyond doubt the poker center
+of the universe, should also have attained to eminence in drinks. It was
+in St. Louis that two great drinks came into being. In the old days of
+straight whisky, the term for three fingers of red liquor in a whisky
+glass was a "ball." But there came from Austria a man named Enno
+Sanders, who established a bottling works in St. Louis, and manufactured
+seltzer. St. Louis liked the seltzer and presently it became the
+practice to add a little of the bubbling water to the "ball." This
+necessitated a taller glass, so men began to call for a "_high_ ball."
+
+The weary traveler may be glad to know that the highball has not been
+discontinued in St. Louis.
+
+Another drink which originated in St. Louis is the gin rickey. Colonel
+Rickey was born in Hannibal, Mo., of which town I shall write presently.
+Later he moved to St. Louis and invented the famous rickey, which
+immortalized his name--preserving it, as it were, in alcohol. The drink
+was first served in a bar opposite the old Southern Hotel--a hotel
+which, by the way, I regretted to see standing empty and deserted at the
+time of my last visit, for, in its prime, it was a hotel among hotels.
+
+I have tried to lead gradually, effectively to a climax. From clubs,
+which are pleasant, I progressed to poker, which is pleasanter; from
+poker I stepped ahead to highballs and gin rickeys. And now I am
+prepared to reach my highest altitude. I intend to tell the very nicest
+thing about St. Louis. And the nicest thing about St. Louis is the
+nicest thing that there can be about a place.
+
+It discounts primitive street cars, an ill-set railway station, and an
+unfinished bridge. It sinks the parks, the botanical gardens, the art
+museum into comparative oblivion. Small wonder that St. Louis seems to
+ignore her minor weaknesses when she excels in this one thing--as she
+must know she does.
+
+The nicest thing about St. Louis is St. Louis girls.
+
+In the first place, fashionable young women in St. Louis are quite as
+gratifying to the eye as women anywhere. In the second place, they have
+unusual poise. This latter quality is very striking, and it springs, I
+fancy, from the town's conservatism and solidity. The young girls and
+young men of the St. Louis social group have grown up together, as have
+their parents and grandparents before them. They give one the feeling
+that they are somehow rooted to the place, as no New Yorker is rooted to
+New York. The social fabric of St. Louis changes little. The old
+families live in the houses they have always lived in, instead of moving
+from apartment to apartment every year or two. One does not feel the
+nervous tug of social and financial straining, of that eternal
+overreaching which one senses always in New York.
+
+One day at luncheon I found myself between two very lovely
+creatures--neither of them over twenty-two or twenty-three; both of them
+endowed with the aplomb of older, more experienced, women--who endeared
+themselves to me by talking critically about the works of Meredith--and
+Joseph Conrad--and Leonard Merrick. Fancy that! Fancy their being pretty
+girls yet having worth-while things to say--and about those three men!
+
+And when the conversation drifted away from books to the topic which my
+companion and I call "life stuff," and when I found them adept also in
+that field, my appreciation of St. Louis became boundless.
+
+It just occurs to me that, in publishing the fact that St. Louis girls
+have brains I may have unintentionally done them an unkindness.
+
+Once I asked a young English bachelor to my house for a week-end.
+
+"I want you to come this week," I said, "because the prettiest girl I
+know will be there."
+
+"Delighted," he replied.
+
+"She's a most unusual girl," I went on, "for, besides being a dream of
+loveliness, she's clever."
+
+"Oh," he said, "if she's clever, let me come some other time. I don't
+like 'em clever. I like 'em pretty and stupid."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+HANNIBAL AND MARK TWAIN
+
+
+If black slaves are no longer bought and sold there, if the river
+trade has dwindled, if the railroad and the factory have come,
+bringing a larger population with them, if the town now has a
+hundred-thousand-dollar city hall, a country club, and "fifty-six
+passenger trains daily," it is, at all events, a pleasure to record the
+fact that Hannibal, Missouri, retains to-day that look of soft and
+shambling picturesqueness suitable to an old river town, and essential
+to the "St. Petersburg" of fiction--the perpetual dwelling place of
+those immortal boys, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.
+
+Should this characterization of the town fail to meet with the approval
+of the Hannibal Commercial Club, I regret it, for I honor the Commercial
+Club because of its action toward the preservation of a thing so
+uncommercial as the boyhood home of Mark Twain. But, after all, the club
+must remember that, in its creditable effort to build up a newer and
+finer Hannibal, a Hannibal of brick and granite, it is running counter
+to the sentimental interests of innumerable persons who, though most of
+them have never seen the old town and never will, yet think of it as
+given to them by Mark Twain, with a peculiar tenderness, as though it
+were a Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn among the cities--a ragged, happy boy of
+a town, which ought never, never to grow up.
+
+There is no more charming way of preserving the memory of an artist than
+through the preservation of the house in which he lived, and that is
+especially true where the artist was a literary man and where the house
+has figured in his writings. What memorial to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, for
+example, could equal the one in Portsmouth, N. H., where is preserved
+the house in which the "Bad Boy" of the "Diary" used to live, even to
+the furniture and the bedroom wall paper mentioned in the book? And what
+monuments to Washington Irving could touch quite the note that is
+touched by that old house in Tarrytown, N. Y., or that other old house
+in Irving Place, in the city of New York, where the Authors' League of
+America now has its headquarters?
+
+With the exception of Stratford-on-Avon, I do not know of a community so
+completely dominated by the memory of a great man of letters as is the
+city of Hannibal by the memory of Mark Twain. There is, indeed, a
+curious resemblance to be traced between the two towns. I don't mean a
+physical resemblance, for no places could be less alike than the garden
+town where Shakespeare lived and the pathetic wooden village of the
+early west in which nine years of Mark Twain's boyhood were spent. The
+resemblance is only in the majestic shadows cast over them by their
+great men.
+
+Thus, the hotel in Stratford is called The Shakespeare Hotel, while that
+in Hannibal is The Mark Twain. Stratford has the house in which
+Shakespeare was born; Hannibal the house in which Mark Twain lived--the
+house of Tom Sawyer. Stratford has the cottage of Anne Hathaway;
+Hannibal that of Becky Thatcher. And Hannibal has, furthermore, one
+possession which lovers of the delightful Becky will hope may long be
+spared to it--it possesses, in the person of Mrs. Laura Hawkins Frazer,
+who is now matron of the Home for the Friendless, the original of Becky.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is said that a memorial tablet, intended to mark the birthplace of
+Eugene Field in St. Louis, was placed, not only upon the wrong house,
+but upon a house in the wrong street. Mark Twain unveiled the tablet;
+one can fancy the spirits of these two Missouri literary men meeting
+somewhere and smiling together over that. But if the shade of Mark Twain
+should undertake to chaff that of the poet upon the fact that mortals
+had erred as to the location of his birthplace, the shade of Field would
+not be able to retort in kind, for--thanks partly to the fact that Mark
+Twain was known for a genius while he was yet alive, and partly to the
+indefatigable labors of his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine--a vast
+fund of accurate information has been preserved, covering the life of
+the great Missourian, from the time of his birth in the little hamlet of
+Florida, Mo., to his death in Reading, Conn. No; if the shade of Field
+should wish to return the jest, it would probably call the humorist's
+attention to a certain memorial tablet in the Mark Twain house in
+Hannibal. But of that presently.
+
+I have said that the Commercial Club honored Mark Twain's memory. That
+is true. But the Commercial Club would not be a Commercial Club if it
+did not also wish the visitor to take into consideration certain other
+matters. In effect it says to him: "Yes, indeed, Mark Twain spent the
+most important part of his boyhood here. But we wish you to understand
+that Hannibal is a busy, growing town. We have the cheapest electric
+power in the Mississippi Valley. We offer free factory sites. We--"
+
+"Yes," you say, "but where is the Mark Twain house?"
+
+"Oh--" says Hannibal, catching its breath. "Go right on up Main to Hill
+Street; you'll find it just around the corner. Any one will point it out
+to you. There's a bronze tablet in the wall. But put this little
+pamphlet in your pocket. It tells all about our city. You can read it at
+your leisure."
+
+You take the pamphlet and move along up Main Street. And if there is a
+sympathetic native with you he will stop you at the corner of Main and
+Bird--they call it Wildcat Corner--and point out a little wooden shanty
+adjoining a nearby alley, where, it is said, Mark Twain's father, John
+Marshall Clemens, had his office when he was Justice of the Peace--the
+same office in which Samuel Clemens in his boyhood saw the corpse lying
+on the floor, by moonlight, as recounted in "The Innocents Abroad."
+
+[Illustration: We came upon the "Mark Twain House".... And to think
+that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were forced to
+leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there!]
+
+It was at Wildcat Corner, too, that the boys conducted that famous piece
+of high finance: trading off the green watermelon, which they had
+stolen, for a ripe one, on the allegation that the former had been
+purchased.
+
+Also near the corner stands the building in which Joseph Ament had the
+office of his newspaper, the "Missouri Courier," where young Sam Clemens
+first went to work as an apprentice, doing errands and learning to set
+type; and there are many other old buildings having some bearing on the
+history of the Clemens family, including one at the corner of Main and
+Hill Streets, in the upper story of which the family lived for a time, a
+building somewhat after the Greek pattern so prevalent throughout the
+south in the early days. Once, when he revisited Hannibal after he had
+become famous, Mark Twain stopped before that building and told Mr.
+George A. Mahan that he remembered when it was erected, and that at the
+time the fluted pilasters on the front of it constituted his idea of
+reckless extravagance--that, indeed, the ostentation of them startled
+the whole town.
+
+Turning into Bird Street and passing the old Pavey Hotel, we came upon
+the "Mark Twain House," a tiny box of a cottage, its sagging front so
+taken up with five windows and a door that there is barely room for the
+little bronze plaque which marks the place. At one side is an alley
+running back to the house of Huckleberry Finn, on the next street (Huck,
+as Paine tells us, was really a boy named Tom Blankenship), and in that
+alley stood the historic fence which young Sam Clemens cajoled the other
+boys into whitewashing for him, as related in "Tom Sawyer."
+
+Inside the house there is little to be seen. It is occupied now by a
+custodian who sells souvenir post cards, and has but few Mark Twain
+relics to show--some photographs and autographs; nothing of importance.
+But, despite that, I got a real sensation as I stood in the little
+parlor, hardly larger than a good-sized closet, and realized that in
+that miserable shanty grew up the wild, barefoot boy who has since been
+called "the greatest Missourian" and "America's greatest literary man,"
+and that in and about that place he gathered the impressions and had the
+adventures which, at the time, he himself never dreamed would be made by
+him into books--much less books that would be known as classics.
+
+In the front room of the cottage a memorial tablet is to be seen. It is
+a curious thing. At the top is the following inscription:
+
+     THIS BUILDING PRESENTED TO THE
+           CITY OF HANNIBAL,
+             MAY 7, 1912,
+                 BY
+     MR. AND MRS. GEORGE A. MAHAN
+           AS A MEMORIAL TO
+             MARK TWAIN
+
+Beneath the legend is a portrait bust of the author in bas relief. At
+the bottom of the tablet is another inscription. From across the room I
+saw that it was set off in quotation marks, and assuming, of course,
+that it was some particularly suitable extract from the works of the
+most quotable of all Americans, I stepped across and read it. This is
+what it said:
+
+     "MARK TWAIN'S LIFE TEACHES THAT POVERTY IS AN INCENTIVE RATHER THAN
+     A BAR: AND THAT ANY BOY, HOWEVER HUMBLE HIS BIRTH AND SURROUNDINGS,
+     MAY BY HONESTY AND INDUSTRY ACCOMPLISH GREAT THINGS."
+
+          --GEORGE A. MAHAN.
+
+That inscription made me think of many things. It made me think of
+Napoleon's inscription on the statue of Henri IV, and of Judge
+Thatcher's talk with Tom Sawyer, in the Sunday school, and of Mr.
+Walters, the Sunday school superintendent, in the same book, and of
+certain moral lessons drawn by Andrew Carnegie. And not the least thing
+of which it made me think was the mischievous, shiftless, troublesome,
+sandy-haired young rascal who hated school and Sunday school and yet
+became the more than honest, more than industrious man, commemorated
+there.
+
+If I did not feel the inspiration of that place while considering the
+tablet, the back yard gave me real delight. There were the old
+outhouses, the old back stair, the old back fence, and the little window
+looking down on them--the window of Tom Sawyer, beneath which, in the
+gloaming, Huckleberry Finn made catcalls to summon forth his fellow
+bucaneer. And here, below the window, was the place where Pamela
+Clemens, Sam's sister, the original of Cousin Mary in "Tom Sawyer," had
+her candy pull on that evening when a boy, in his undershirt, came
+tumbling from above.
+
+And to think that, wretched as this place was, the Clemens family were
+forced to leave it for a time because they were too poor to live there!
+Of a certainty Mark Twain's early life was as squalid as his later life
+was rich. However, it was always colorful--he saw to that, straight
+through from the barefoot days to those of the white suits, the Oxford
+gown, and the European courts.
+
+Not far back of the house rises the "Cardiff Hill" of the stories; in
+reality, Holliday's Hill, so called because long ago there lived, up at
+the top, old Mrs. Holliday, who burned a lamp in her window every night
+as a mark for river pilots to run by. It was down that hill that the
+boys rolled the stones which startled churchgoers, and that final,
+enormous rock which, by a fortunate freak of chance, hurdled a negro and
+his wagon instead of striking and destroying them. Ah, how rich in racy
+memories are those streets! Somewhere among them, in that part of town
+which has come to be called "Mark-Twainville," is the very spot,
+unmarked and unknown, where young Sam Clemens picked up a scrap of
+newspaper upon which was printed a portion of the tale of Joan of
+Arc--a scrap of paper which, Paine says, gave him his first literary
+stimulus. And somewhere else, not far from the house, is the place where
+Orion Clemens, Sam's elder brother, ran the ill-starred newspaper on
+which Sam worked, setting type and doing his first writing. It was,
+indeed, in Orion's paper that Sam's famous verse, "To Mary in Hannibal,"
+was published--the title condensed, because of the narrow column, to
+read: "To Mary in H--l."
+
+[Illustration: At one side is an alley running back to the house of
+Huckleberry Finn, and in that alley stood the historic fence which young
+Sam Clemens cajoled the other boys into whitewashing for him]
+
+Along the crest of the bluffs, overlooking the river, the city of
+Hannibal has made for itself a charming park, and at the highest point
+in this park there is to be unveiled, in a short time, a statue of
+Samuel Langhorne Clemens, which, from its position, will command a view
+of many leagues of mile-wide Mississippi. It is peculiarly fitting that
+the memorial should be stationed in that place. Mark Twain loved the
+river. Even though it almost "got" him in his boyhood (he had "nine
+narrow escapes from drowning") he adored it; later, when his youthful
+ambition to become a river pilot was attained, he still adored it; and
+finally he wrote his love of it into that masterpiece, "Life on the
+Mississippi," of which Arnold Bennett has said: "I would sacrifice for
+it the entire works of Thackeray and George Eliot."
+
+Looking up the river from the spot where the statue will be placed, one
+may see Turtle Island, where Tom and Huck used to go and feast on
+turtle's eggs--rowing there in that boat which, after they had so
+"honestly and industriously" stolen it, they painted red, that its
+former proprietor might not recognize it. Below is Glascox Island, where
+Nigger Jim hid. Glascox Island is often called Tom Sawyer's Island, or
+Mark Twain's Island, now. Not far below the island is the "scar on the
+hill-side" which marks the famous cave.
+
+"For Sam Clemens," says Paine in his biography, "the cave had a
+fascination that never faded. Other localities and diversions might
+pall, but any mention of the cave found him always eager and ready for
+the three-mile walk or pull that brought them to the mystic door."
+
+I suggested to my companion that, for the sake of sentiment, we, too,
+approach the cave by rowing down the river. And, having suggested the
+plan, I offered to take upon myself the heaviest responsibility
+connected with it--that of piloting the boat in these unfamiliar waters.
+All I required of him was the mere manual act of working the oars. To my
+amazement he refused. I fear that he not only lacks sentiment, but that
+he is becoming lazy.
+
+We drove out to the cave in a Ford car.
+
+Do you remember when Tom Sawyer took the boys to the cave at night, in
+"Huckleberry Finn"?
+
+"We went to a clump of bushes," says Huck, "and Tom made everybody swear
+to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in
+the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit candles and crawled in on
+our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave
+opened up. Tom poked about among the passages, and pretty soon ducked
+under a wall where you wouldn't 'a' noticed there was a hole. We went
+along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty
+and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: 'Now we'll start this band of
+robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has
+got to take an oath and write his name in blood.'"
+
+That is the sort of cave it is--a wonderful, mysterious place, black as
+India ink; a maze of passage-ways and vaulted rooms, eaten by the waters
+of long ago through the limestone cliffs; a seemingly endless cavern
+full of stalactites and stalagmites, looking like great conical masses
+of candle grease; a damp, oppressive labyrinth of eerie rock formations,
+to kindle the most bloodcurdling imaginings.
+
+As we moved in, away from the daylight, illuminating our way, feebly,
+with such matches as we happened to have with us, and with newspaper
+torches, the man who had driven us out there told us about the cave.
+
+"They ain't no one ever explored it," he said. "'S too big. Why, they's
+a lake in here--quite a big lake, with fish in it. And they's an arm of
+the cave that goes away down underneath the river. They say they's
+wells, too--holes with no bottoms to 'em. Prob'ly that's where them
+people went to that's got lost in the cave."
+
+"Have people gotten lost in here?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said cheerfully. "They say there's some that's gone in and
+never come out again. She's quite a cave."
+
+I began to walk more gingerly into the blackness.
+
+"I suppose," I said to him presently, "there are toads and snakes and
+such things here?"
+
+He hastened to set my mind at rest on that.
+
+"Oh, Lord bless you, yes!" he declared. "Bats, too."
+
+"And I suppose some of those holes you speak of are full of snakes?"
+
+"Most likely." His voice reverberated in the darkness. "But I can't be
+sure. Nobody that's ever been in them holes ain't lived to tell the
+tale."
+
+By this time we had reached a point at which no glimmer of light from
+the mouth of the cave was visible. We were feeling our way along,
+running our hands over the damp rocks and putting our feet before us
+with the utmost caution. I knew, of course, that it would add a good
+deal to my story if one of our party fell into a hole and was never
+again heard from, but the more I thought about it the more advisable it
+seemed to me that I should not be that one. I had an engagement for
+dinner that evening, and besides, if I fell in, who would write the
+story? Certainly the driver of the auto-hack, for all his good will,
+could hardly do it justice; whereas, if he fell in I could at a pinch
+drive the little Ford back to the city.
+
+I dropped behind. But when I did that he stopped.
+
+"I just stopped for breath," I said. "You can keep on and I'll follow in
+a minute."
+
+"No," he answered, "I'll wait for you. I'm out of breath, too. Besides,
+I don't want you to get lost in here."
+
+At this juncture my companion, who had moved a little way off, gave a
+frightful yell, which echoed horribly through the cavern.
+
+I could not see him. I did not know what was the matter. Never mind! My
+one thought was of him. Perhaps he had been attacked by a wildcat or a
+serpent. Well, he was my fellow traveler, and I would stand by him! Even
+the chauffeur of the hack seemed to feel the same way. Together we
+turned and ran toward the place whence we thought the voice might have
+come--that is to say, toward the mouth of the cave. But when we reached
+it he wasn't there.
+
+"He must be back in the cave, after all," I said to the driver.
+
+"Yes," he agreed.
+
+"Now, I tell you," I said. "We mustn't both go in after him. One of us
+ought to stay here and call to the others to guide them out. I'll do
+that. I have a good strong voice. And you go in and find out what's the
+matter. You know the cave better than I do."
+
+"Oh, no I don't," said the man.
+
+"Why certainly you do!" I said.
+
+"I wasn't never into the cave before," he said. "Leastways not nowhere
+near as far as we was this time."
+
+"But you live right here in Hannibal," I insisted. "You _must_ know more
+about it than I do. I live in New York. What could I know about a cave
+away out here in Missouri?"
+
+"Well, you know just as much as I do, anyhow," he returned doggedly.
+
+"Look here!" I said sharply. "I hope you aren't a coward? The idea! A
+great big fellow like you, too!"
+
+However, at that juncture, our argument was stopped by the appearance of
+the missing man. He strolled into the light in leisurely fashion.
+
+"What happened?" I cried.
+
+"Happened?" he repeated. "Nothing happened. Why?"
+
+"You yelled, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes," he said, "I wanted to hear the echoes."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Before leaving Hannibal that afternoon, we had the pleasure of meeting
+an old school friend of Samuel Clemens's, Colonel John L. RoBards--the
+same John RoBards of whom it is recorded in Paine's work that "he wore
+almost continually the medal for amiability, while Samuel Clemens had a
+mortgage on the medal for spelling."
+
+Colonel RoBards is still amiable. He took us to his office, showed us a
+scrap-book containing clippings in which he was mentioned in connection
+with Mark Twain, and told us of old days in the log schoolhouse.
+
+Seeing that I was making notes, the Colonel called my attention politely
+to the spelling of his name, requesting that I get it right. Then he
+explained to me the reason for the capital B, beginning the second
+syllable.
+
+"I may say, sir," he explained in his fine Southern manner, "that I
+inserted that capital B myself. At least I converted the small B into a
+capital. I am a Kentuckian, sir, and in Kentucky my family name stands
+for something. It is a name that I am proud to bear, and I do not like
+to be called out of it. But up here I was continually annoyed by the
+errors of careless persons. Frequently they would fail to give the
+accent on the final syllable, where it should be placed, sir--Ro_Bards_;
+that is the way it should be pronounced--but even worse, it happened now
+and then that some one called me by the plebeian appellation, Roberts.
+That was most distasteful to me, sir. _Most_ distasteful. For that
+reason I use the capital B for emphasis."
+
+I was glad to assure the Colonel that in these pages his name would be
+correctly spelled, and I call him to witness that I spoke the truth. I
+repeat, the name is RoBards. And it is borne by a most amiable
+gentleman.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. F. W. Hixson of St. Louis has in his possession an autograph book
+which belonged to his mother when she was a young girl (Ann Virginia
+Ruffner), residing in Hannibal. In this book, Sam Clemens wrote a verse
+at the time when he was preparing to leave the town where he had spent
+his youth. I reproduce that boyish bit of doggerel here, solely for the
+value of one word which it contains:
+
+     Good-by, good-by,
+     I bid you now, my friend;
+     And though 'tis hard to say the word,
+     To destiny I bend.
+
+Never, in his most perfect passages, did Samuel Clemens hit more
+certainly upon the one right word than when in this verse he wrote the
+second word in the last line.
+
+And what a destiny it was!
+
+[Illustration: Never outside of Brittany and Normandy have I seen roads
+so full of animals as those of Pike County]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+PIKE AND POKER
+
+
+It was before we left St. Louis that I received a letter inviting us to
+visit in the town of Louisiana, Mo. I quote a portion of it:
+
+     Louisiana is in Pike County, a county famous for its big red
+     apples, miles of rock roads, fine old estates, Rhine scenery,
+     capons, rare old country hams, and poker. Pike County means more to
+     Missouri than Missouri does to Pike.
+
+     Do you remember "Jim Bludso of the 'Prairie Belle'"?
+
+       _He weren't no saint--them engineers
+         Is pretty much all alike--
+       One wife in Natchez-under-the-Hill
+         And another one here in Pike._
+
+     We can show you "the willer-bank on the right," where Bludso ran
+     the 'Prairie Belle' aground and made good with his life his old
+     promise:
+
+       _I'll hold her nozzle agin the bank
+       Till the last galoot's ashore._
+
+     We can also show you the home of Champ Clark, and the largest
+     nursery in the world, and a meadow where, twenty-five years ago, a
+     young fellow threw down his hayfork and said to his companion:
+     "Sam, I'm going to town to study law with Champ Clark. Some day I'm
+     going to be Governor of this State." He was Elliott W. Major, and
+     he is Governor to-day.
+
+The promise held forth by this letter appealed to me. It is always
+interesting to see whether a man like Champ Clark lives in a house with
+ornamental iron fences on the roof and iron urns in the front yard;
+likewise there is a sort of fascination for a man of my extensive
+ignorance, in hearing not merely how the Governor of Missouri decided to
+become Governor, but in finding out his name. Then those hams and
+capons--how many politicians can compare for interest with a tender
+capon or a fine old country ham? And perhaps more alluring to me than
+any of these was the idea of going to visit in a strange State, and a
+strange town, and a strange house--the house of a total stranger.
+
+We accepted.
+
+Our host met us with his touring car and proceeded to make good his
+promises about the nursery, and the scenery, and the roads, and the
+estates, and as we bowled along he told us about "Pike." It is indeed a
+great county. And the fact that it was originally settled by Virginians,
+Kentuckians, and Carolinians still stamps it strongly with the qualities
+of the South. Though north of St. Louis on the map, it is south of St.
+Louis in its spirit. Indeed, Louisiana is the most Southern town in
+appearance and feeling that we visited upon our travels. The broad black
+felt hats one sees about the streets, the luxuriant mustaches and
+goatees--all these things mark the town, and if they are not enough, you
+should see "Indy" Gordon as she walks along puffing at a bulldog pipe
+black as her own face.
+
+Never outside of Brittany and Normandy have I seen roads so full of
+animals as those of Pike County. From the great four-horse teams,
+drawing produce to and from the beautiful estate called "Falicon," to
+the mule teams and the saddle horses and the cows and pigs and chickens
+and dogs, all the quadrupeds and bipeds domesticated by mankind were
+there upon the roads to meet us and to protest, by various antics,
+against the invasion of the motor car. Dogs hurled themselves at the car
+as though to suicide; chickens extended themselves in shrieking dives
+across our course; pigs arose from the luxurious mud with grunts of
+frantic disapproval, and cantered heavily into the fields; cows trotted
+lumberingly before us, their hind legs and their fore legs moving, it
+seemed, without relation to each other; a goat ran round and round the
+tree to which he was attached; mules pointed their ears to heaven, and
+opened their eyes wide in horror and amazement; beautiful saddle horses
+bearing countrymen, or rosy-cheeked young women from the farms, tried to
+climb into the boughs of wayside trees for safety, and four-horse teams
+managed to get themselves involved in a manner only rivaled by a ball of
+yarn with which a kitten is allowed to work its own sweet will.
+
+Our host took all these matters calmly. When a mule protested at our
+presence on the road, it would merely serve as a reminder that, "Pike
+County furnished most of the mules for the Spanish war"; or, when a
+saddle horse showed signs of homicidal purpose, it would draw the calm
+observation, "Pike is probably the greatest county in the whole United
+States for saddle horses. 'Missouri King,' the undefeated champion
+saddle horse of the world, was raised here."
+
+So we progressed amid the outraged animals.
+
+My feeling as I alighted at last on the step before our host's front
+door was one of definite relief. For dinner is the meal I care for most,
+and man, with all his faults, the animal I most enjoy.
+
+The house was genial like its owner--it was just the sort of house I
+like; large and open, with wide halls, spacious rooms, comfortable beds
+and chairs, and ash trays everywhere.
+
+"I've asked some men in for dinner and a little game," our host informed
+us, as he left us to our dressing.
+
+Presently we heard motors arriving in the drive, beneath our windows.
+When we descended, the living room was filled with men in dinner suits.
+(Oh, yes; they wear them in those Mississippi River towns, and they fit
+as well as yours does!)
+
+When we had been introduced we all moved to the dining room.
+
+At each place was a printed menu with the heading "At Home Abroad"--a
+hospitable inversion of the general title of these chapters--and with
+details as follows:
+
+A COUNTRY DINNER
+
+         Old Pike County ham,
+         Pike County capons
+     and other Pike County essentials,
+       with Pike County Colonels.
+
+At the bottom of the card was this--shall I call it warning?
+
+     Senator Warner once said to Colonel Roosevelt: "_Pike County babies
+     cut their teeth on poker chips_."
+
+I have already said that Pike is a county with a Southern savor, but I
+had not realized how fully that was true until I dined there. I will not
+say that I have never tasted such a dinner, for truth I hold even above
+politeness. All I will say is that if ever before I had met with such a
+meal the memory of it has departed--and, I may add, my memory for famous
+meals is considered good to the point of irritation.
+
+The dinner (save for the "essentials") was entirely made up of products
+of the county. More, it was even supervised and cooked by county
+products, for two particularly sweet young ladies, members of the
+family, were flying around the kitchen in their pretty evening gowns,
+helping and directing Molly.
+
+Molly is a pretty mulatto girl. Her skin is like a smooth, light-colored
+bronze, her eye is dark and gentle, like that of some domesticated
+animal, her voice drawls in melodious cadences, and she has a sort of
+shyness which is very fetching.
+
+"Ah cain't cook lak they used to cook in the ole days," she smiled in
+response to my tribute to the dinner, later. "The Kuhnel was askin' jus'
+th' othah day if ah could make 'im some ash cake, but ah haid to tell
+'im ah couldn't. Ah've seen ma gran'fatha make it lots o' times, but
+folks cain't make it no mo', now-a-days."
+
+Poor benighted Northerner that I am, I had to ask what ash cake was. It
+is a kind of corn cake, Molly told me, the parent, so to speak, of the
+corn dodger, and the grandparent of hoecake. It has to be prepared
+carefully and then cooked in the hot ashes--cooked "jes so," as Molly
+said.
+
+Having learned about ash cake, I demanded more Pike County culinary
+lore, whereupon I was told, partly by my host, and partly by Molly,
+about the oldtime wedding cooks.
+
+Wedding cooks were the best cooks in the South, supercooks, with
+state-wide reputations. When there was a wedding a dinner was given at
+the home of the bride, for all the wedding guests, and it was in the
+preparation of this repast that the wedding cook of the bride's family
+showed what she could do. That dinner was on the day of the wedding. On
+the next day the entire company repaired to the home of the groom's
+family, where another dinner was served--a dinner in which the wedding
+cook belonging to this family tried to outdo that of the day before.
+This latter feast was known as the "infair." But all these old Southern
+customs seem to have departed now, along with the wedding cooks
+themselves. The latter very seldom came to sale, being regarded as the
+most valuable of all slaves. Once in a while when some leading family
+was in financial difficulties and was forced to sell its wedding cook
+she would bring as much as eight or ten times the price of an ordinary
+female slave.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After dinner, when we moved out to the living room, we found a large,
+green table all in place, with the chips arranged in little piles. But
+let me introduce you to the players.
+
+First, there was Colonel Edgar Stark, our host, genial and warm-hearted
+over dinner; cold and inscrutable behind his spectacles when poker chips
+appeared.
+
+Then Colonel Charlie Buffum, heavily built, but with a similar dual
+personality.
+
+Then Colonel Frank Buffum, State Highway Commissioner; or, as some one
+called him later in the evening, when the chips began to gather at his
+place, State "highwayman."
+
+Then Colonel Dick Goodman, banker, raconteur, and connoisseur of edibles
+and "essentials."
+
+Then Colonel George S. Cake, who, when not a Colonel, is a Commodore:
+commander of the "Betsy," flagship of the Louisiana Yacht Club, and the
+most famous craft to ply the Mississippi since the "Prairie Belle."
+(Don't "call" Colonel Cake when he raises you and at the same time
+raises his right eyebrow.)
+
+Then Colonel Dick Hawkins, former Collector of the Port of St. Louis,
+and more recently (since there has been so little in St. Louis to
+collect) a gentleman farmer. (Colonel Hawkins always wins at poker. The
+question is not "Will he win?" but "How much?")
+
+Only two men in the game were not, so far as I discovered, Colonels.
+
+One, Major Dave Wald, has been held back in title because of time
+devoted to the pursuit of literature. Major Wald has written a book. The
+subject of the book is Poker. As a tactician, he is perhaps unrivaled in
+Missouri. He will look at a hand and instantly declare the percentage of
+chance it stands of filling in the draw, according to the law of chance.
+One hand will be, to Major Wald, a "sixteen-time hand"; another a
+"thirty-two time hand," and so on--meaning that the player has one
+chance in sixteen, or in thirty-two, of filling.
+
+The other player was merely a plain "Mister," like ourselves--Mr. John
+W. Matson, the corporation lawyer. At first I felt sorry for Mr. Matson.
+It seemed hard that the rank of Colonel had been denied him. But when I
+saw him shuffle and deal, I was no longer sorry for him, but for myself.
+With the possible exception of General Bob Williams (who won't play any
+more now that he has been appointed postmaster), and Colonel Clarence
+Buell, who used to play in the big games on the Mississippi boats, Mr.
+Matson can shuffle and deal more rapidly and more accurately than any
+man in Missouri.
+
+Colonel Buell was present, as was Colonel Lloyd Stark, but neither
+played. Colonel Buell had intended to, but on being told that my
+companion and I were from New York he declined to "take the money." The
+Colonel--but to say "the Colonel" in Pike County is hardly
+specific--Colonel Buell, I mean, is the same gentleman who fought the
+Indians, long ago, with Buffalo Bill, and who later acted as treasurer
+of the Wild West Show on its first trip to Europe. Some one informed me
+that the Colonel--Colonel Buell, I mean--was a capitalist, but the
+information was beside the mark, for I had already seen the diamond ring
+he wears--a most remarkable piece of landscape gardening.
+
+During the evening Colonel Buell, who stood for an hour or two and
+watched the play, spoke of certain things that he had seen and done
+which, as I estimated it, could not have been seen or done within the
+last sixty years. "How old is Colonel Buell?" I asked another Colonel.
+
+"Colonel," asked the Colonel, "how old are you?"
+
+"Colonel," replied the Colonel, "I am exactly in my prime."
+
+"I know that, Colonel," said the Colonel, "but what is your age?"
+
+"Colonel," returned the Colonel suavely, "I have forgotten my exact age.
+But I know that I am somewhere between eighty and one hundred and
+forty-two."
+
+It was Mr. Matson's deal. He dealt. The cards passed through the air and
+fell, one on the other, in neat piles. (If you prefer it, Mr. Matson can
+drop a fan-shaped hand before you, all ready to pick up.) And from the
+time that the first hand was played I knew that here, as in St. Louis,
+my companion and I were babes among the lions. I do not know how he
+played, but I do know that I played along as best I could, only trying
+not to lose too much money at once.
+
+But why rehearse the pathetic story? I spoke in a former chapter of
+Missouri poker, and Pike County is a county in Missouri. Bet on a good
+pat hand and some one always holds a better one. Bluff and they call
+you. Call and they beat you. There is no way of winning from Missouri.
+Missouri poker players are mahatmas. They have an occult sense of cards.
+Babes at their mothers' breasts can tell the difference between a
+straight and a flush long before they have the power of speech. Once,
+while in Pike County, I asked a little boy how many brothers and sisters
+he had. "One brother and three sisters," he replied, and added: "A full
+house."
+
+The Missouri gentlemen, so gay, so genial, at the dinner table, take on
+a frigid look when the cards and chips appear. They turn from gentle,
+kindly human beings into relentless, ravening wolves, each intent upon
+the thought of devouring the other. And when, over a poker game, some
+player seems to enter into a pleasant conversation, the other players
+know that even that is a bluff--a blind to cover up some diabolic plot.
+
+Once during the game, for instance, Colonel Hawkins started in to tell
+me something of his history. And I, bland simpleton, believed we were
+conversing _sans_ ulterior motive.
+
+"I used to be in politics," he said. "Then I was in the banking
+business. But I've gone back to farming now, because it is the only
+honest business in the world. In fact--"
+
+But at that juncture the steely voices of half the other players at the
+table interrupted.
+
+"Ante!" they cried. "Ante, farmer!"
+
+Whereupon Colonel Hawkins, who by that time had to crane his neck to see
+the table over his pile of chips--a pile of chips like the battlements
+of some feudal lord--anted suavely.
+
+By midnight Colonel Buell, who had stood behind me for a time and
+watched my play, showed signs of fatigue and anguish. And a little
+later, after having seen me try to "put it over" with three sixes, he
+sighed heavily and went home--a fine, slender, courtly figure, straight
+as a gun barrel, walking sadly out into the night. Next Major Wald
+ceased to play for himself, but began to take an interest in my hand.
+Under his supervision during the last fifteen minutes of the game I made
+a tiny dent in Colonel Hawkins's stacks of chips. But it is only just to
+Colonel Hawkins to say that, by that time, the Missourians were so sorry
+for us that they were making the most desperate efforts not to win from
+us any more than they could help.
+
+When the game broke up, Major Wald and Colonel Hawkins showed concern
+about our future.
+
+"How far are you young men going, did you say?" asked Colonel Hawkins.
+
+"To the Pacific Coast," I answered.
+
+At that the two veteran poker players looked at each other solemnly, in
+silence, and shook their heads.
+
+"All the way to the coast, eh?" demanded Major Wald. Then: "Do you
+expect to play cards much as you go along?"
+
+I wished to uphold the honor of New York as best I could, so I tried to
+reply gamely.
+
+"Oh, yes," I said. "Whenever anybody wants a game they'll find us
+ready."
+
+Again I saw them exchange glances.
+
+"You tell him, Major," said Colonel Hawkins, walking away.
+
+"Young man," said Major Wald, placing his hand kindly on my shoulder, "I
+played poker before you were born. I know a good deal about it. You
+wouldn't take offense if I gave you a pointer about your game?"
+
+"On the contrary," I said, thinking I was about to hear the inner
+secrets of Missouri poker, "I shall be most grateful."
+
+"If I advise you," he pursued, "will you agree to follow my advice?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well," said the Major, "don't you play poker any more while you're in
+the West. Wait till you get back to New York."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seeing the houses of the players next day as I drove about the county, I
+suspected that even these had been built around the game of poker, for
+each house has ample accommodations for the "gang" in case the game
+lasts until too late to go home. In the winter the games occur at the
+houses of the different Colonels, and there is always a dinner first.
+But it is in summer that the greatest games occur, for then it is the
+immemorial custom for the Colonels (and Major Wald and Mr. Matson, too,
+of course) to charter a steamer and go out on the river. These
+excursions sometimes last for the better part of a week. Sometimes they
+cruise. Sometimes they go ashore upon an island and camp. "We take a
+tribe of cooks and a few cases of 'essentials,'" one of the Colonels
+explained to me, "and the game never stops at all."
+
+My companion and I were tired. The mental strain had told upon us. Soon
+after the Colonels, the Major, and Mr. Matson went, we retired. It
+seemed to me that I had hardly closed my eyes when I heard a faint rap
+at my bedroom door. But I must have slept, for there was sunlight
+streaming through the window.
+
+"What is it?" I called.
+
+The voice of our host replied.
+
+"Breakfast will be ready any time you want it," he declared. "Will you
+have your toddy now?"
+
+Ah! Pike is a great county!
+
+And what do you suppose we had for breakfast? At the center of the table
+was a pile of the most beautiful and enormous red apples--fragrant
+apples, giving a sweet, appetizing scent which filled the room. I had
+thought before that I knew something about apples, but when I tasted
+these I became aware that no merely good apple, no merely fine apple,
+would ever satisfy my taste again. These apples, which are known as the
+"Delicious," are to all other apples that I know as Missouri poker is to
+all other poker. They are in a class absolutely alone, and, in case you
+get some on a lucky day, I want to tell you how to eat them with your
+breakfast. Don't eat them as you eat an ordinary apple, but either fry
+them, with a slice of bacon, or cut them up and take them as you do
+peaches--that is, with cream and sugar. Did you ever see an apple with
+flesh white and firm, yet tender as a pear at the exact point of perfect
+ripeness? Did you ever taste an apple that seemed actually to melt upon
+your tongue? That is the sort of apple we had for breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+OLD RIVER DAYS
+
+
+Later we motored to the town of Clarksville, some miles down the
+river--a town which huddles along the bank, as St. Louis must have in
+her early days. Being a small, straggling village which has not, if one
+may judge from appearances, progressed or even changed in fifty years,
+Clarksville out-Hannibals Hannibal. Or, perhaps, it is to-day the kind
+of town that Hannibal was when Mark Twain was a boy. In its decay it is
+theatrically perfect.
+
+Our motor stopped before the bank, and we were introduced to the editor
+of the local paper, which is called "The Piker."
+
+The bank is, in appearance, contemporary with the town. The fittings are
+of the period of the Civil War--walnut, as I recall them. And there are
+red glass signs over the little window grilles bearing the legends
+"Cashier" and "President."
+
+In the back room we met the president, Mr. John O. Roberts, a gentleman
+over eighty years of age, who can sit back, with his feet upon his desk,
+smoke cigars, and, from a cloud of smoke, exude the most delightful
+stories of old days on the Mississippi. For Mr. Roberts was clerk on
+river boats more than sixty years ago, in the golden days of the great
+stream. There, too, we had the good fortune to meet Professor M. S.
+Goodman, who was born in Missouri in 1837, and founded the Clarksville
+High School in 1865. The professor has written the history of Pike
+County--but that is a big story all by itself.
+
+In the old days Pike County embraced many of the other present counties,
+and, running all the way from the Mississippi to the Missouri River, was
+as large as a good-sized State. Pike has colonized more Western country
+than any other county in Missouri; or, as Professor Goodman put it, "The
+west used to be full of Pike County men who had pushed out there with
+their guns and bottles."
+
+"Yes," added Mr. Roberts in his dry, crackling tone, "and wherever they
+went they always wanted office."
+
+I asked Mr. Roberts about the famous poker games on the river boats.
+
+"I antedate poker," he said. "The old river card game was called 'Brag.'
+It was out of brag that the game of poker developed. A steward on one of
+the boats once told me that he and the other boys had picked up more
+than a hundred dollars from the floor of a room in which Henry Clay and
+some friends had been playing brag."
+
+Golden days indeed!--and for every one. The steamboat companies made
+fabulous returns on their investments.
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Roberts is a wonder--nothing less. There's a book in
+him, and I hope that somebody will write it, for I should like to read
+that book]
+
+"In '54 and '55," said Mr. Roberts, "I worked for the St. Louis & Keokuk
+Packet Company, a line owning three boats, which weren't worth over
+$75,000. That company cleaned up as much as $150,000 clear profit in one
+season. And, of course, a season wasn't an entire year, either. It would
+open about March first and end in December or, in a mild winter,
+January.
+
+"But I tell you we used to drive those boats. We'd shoot up to the docks
+and land our passengers and mail and freight without so much as tying up
+or even stopping. We'd just scrape along the dock and then be off again.
+
+"The highest fare ever charged between St. Louis and Keokuk was $4 for
+the 200 miles. That included a berth, wine, and the finest old Southern
+cooking a man ever tasted. The best cooks I've ever seen in my life were
+those old steamboat cooks. And we gave 'em good stuff to cook, too. We
+bought the best of everything. You ought to see the steaks we had for
+breakfast! The officers used to sit at the ladies' end of the table and
+serve out of big chafing dishes. I tell you those were _meals_!
+
+"There was lots going on all the time on the river. I remember one trip
+I made in '52 in the old 'Di Vernon'--all the boats in the line were
+named for characters in Scott's novels. We were coming from New Orleans
+with 350 German immigrants on deck and 100 Californians in the cabin.
+The Californians were sports and they had a big game going all the time.
+We had two gamblers on board, too--John McKenzie and his partner, a man
+named Wilburn. They used to come on to the boats at different places,
+and make out to be farmers, and not acquainted with each other, and
+there was always something doing when they got into the game.
+
+"Well, this time cholera broke out among the immigrants on the deck.
+They began dying on us. But we had a deckload of lumber, so we were well
+fixed to handle 'em. We took the lumber and built coffins for 'em, and
+when they'd die we'd put 'em in the coffins and save 'em until we got
+enough to make it worth stopping to bury 'em. Then we'd tie up by some
+woodyard and be loading up with wood for the furnaces while the burying
+was going on. Some twenty-five or thirty of 'em died on that trip, and
+we planted 'em at various points along the way. And all the while, up
+there in the cabin, the big game was going on--each fellow trying to
+cheat the other.
+
+"After we got to St. Louis there was a report that we'd buried a man
+with $3,500 sewed into his clothes. Of course we didn't know which was
+which or where we'd buried this man. Well, sir, that started the
+greatest bunch of mining operations along the river bank between New
+Orleans and St. Louis that anybody ever saw! Every one was digging for
+that German. Far as I heard, though, they never found a dollar of him."
+
+Some one in Clarksville (in my notes I neglected to set down the origin
+of this particular item) told me that the term "stateroom" originated
+on the Mississippi boats, where the various rooms were named after the
+States of the Union, a legend which, if true, is worth preserving.
+
+Another interesting item relates to the origin of the slang term
+"piker," which, whatever it may have meant originally, is used to-day to
+designate a timid, close-fisted gambler, a "tightwad" or "short sport."
+
+When one inquires as to the origin of this term, Pike County, Missouri,
+begins to remember that there is another Pike County--Pike County,
+Illinois, just across the river, which, incidentally, is I think, the
+"Pike" referred to in John Hay's poem.
+
+A gentleman in Clarksville explained the origin of the term "piker" to
+me thus:
+
+"In the early days men from Pike County, Missouri, and Pike County,
+Illinois, went all through the West. They were all good men. In fact,
+they were such a fine lot that when any crooks would want to represent
+themselves as honest men they would say they were from Pike. As a result
+of this all the bad men in the West claimed to be from our section, and
+in that way Pike got a bad name. So when the westerners suspected a man
+of being crooked, they'd say: 'Look out for him; he's a Piker.'"
+
+In St. Louis I was given another version. There I was told that long ago
+men would come down from Pike to gamble. They loved cards, but
+oftentimes hadn't enough money to play a big game. So, it was said, the
+term "Piker" came to indicate more or less the type it indicates to-day.
+
+No bit of character and color which we met upon our travels remains in
+my mind more pleasantly than the talk we had with those fine old men
+around the stove in the back room of the bank of Mr. John O. Roberts,
+there at Clarksville. Mr. Roberts is a wonder--nothing less. There's a
+book in him, and I hope that somebody will write it, for I should like
+to read that book.
+
+As we were leaving the bank another gentleman came in. We were
+introduced to him. His name proved also to be John O. Roberts--for he
+was the banker's son.
+
+"Yes," the elder Mr. Roberts explained to me, "and there's another John
+O. Roberts, too--my grandson. We're all John O. Robertses in this
+family. We perpetuate the name because it's an honest name. No John O.
+Roberts ever went to the penitentiary--or to the legislature."
+
+
+
+
+THE BEGINNING OF THE WEST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+KANSAS CITY
+
+
+If you will take a map of the United States and fold it so that the
+Atlantic and Pacific coast lines overlap, the crease at the center will
+form a line which runs down through the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Kansas.
+That is not, however, the true dividing line between East and West. If I
+were to try to draw the true line, I should begin at the north, bringing
+my pencil down between the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis, leaving
+the former to the east, and the latter to the west, and I should follow
+down through the middle of Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri, so that St.
+Louis would be included on the eastern map and Kansas City and Omaha on
+the western.
+
+My companion and I had long looked forward to the West, and had
+speculated as to where we should first meet it. And sometimes, as we
+traveled on, we doubted that there really was a West at all, and feared
+that the whole country had become monotonously "standardized," as was
+recently charged by a correspondent of the London "Times."
+
+I remember that we discussed that question on the train, leaving St.
+Louis, wondering whether Kansas City, whither we were bound, would prove
+to be but one more city like the rest--a place with skyscrapers and
+shops and people resembling, almost exactly, the skyscrapers and shops
+and people of a dozen other cities we had seen.
+
+Morning in the sleeping car found us less concerned about the character
+of cities than about our coffee. Coffee was not to be had upon the
+train. In cheerless emptiness we sat and waited for the station.
+
+While my berth was being turned into its daytime aspect, I was forced to
+accept a seat beside a stranger: a little man with a black felt hat, a
+weedy mustache of neutral color, and an Elk's button. I had a feeling
+that he meant to talk with me; a feeling which amounted to dread.
+Nothing appeals to me at seven in the morning; least of all a
+conversation. At that hour my enthusiasm shows only a low blue flame,
+like a gas jet turned down almost to the point of going out. And in the
+feeble light of that blue flame, my fellow man becomes a vague shape,
+threatening unsolicited civilities. I do not like the hour of seven in
+the morning anywhere, and if there is one condition under which I loathe
+it most, it is before breakfast in a smelly sleeping car. I saw the
+little man regarding me. He was about to speak. And there I was,
+absolutely at his mercy, without so much as a newspaper behind which to
+shield myself.
+
+"Are you from New York?" he asked.
+
+With about the same amount of effort it would take to make a long
+after-dinner speech, I managed to enunciate a hollow: "Yes."
+
+"I thought so," he returned.
+
+It seemed to me that the remark required no answer. He waited; then,
+presently, vouchsafed the added information: "I knew it by your shoes."
+
+Mechanically I looked at my shoes; then at his. I felt like saying:
+"Why? Because my shoes are polished?" But I didn't. All I said was,
+"Oh."
+
+"That's a New York last," he explained. "Long and flat. You can't get a
+shoe like that out in this section. Nobody'd buy 'em if we made 'em."
+Then he added: "I'm in the shoe line, myself."
+
+He paused as though expecting me to state my "line." However, I didn't.
+Very likely he thought it something shameful. After a moment's silence,
+he asked: "Travel out this way much?"
+
+"Never," I said.
+
+"Never been in Kansas City?"
+
+I shook my head.
+
+"Well," he volunteered, "it's a great town. Greatest farm implement
+market in the world." (He drawled "world" as though it were spelled with
+a double R.) "Very little manufacturing but a great distributing point.
+All cattle and farming out here. Everything depends on the crops.
+Different from the East."
+
+I looked out of the window.
+
+It _was_ different from the East. Even through the smoky fog I saw
+that.
+
+"Kansas City!" called the negro porter.
+
+I arose with a sigh, said good-by to the little man, and made my way
+from the car.
+
+The heavy mist was laden with a smoky smell like that of an incipient
+London fog. Through it I discerned, dimly, a Vesuvian hill, piling up to
+the left, while, to the right, a maze of tracks and trains lost
+themselves in the gray blur. Immediately before me stood as disreputable
+a station as I ever saw, its platforms oozing mud, and its doorways
+oozing immigrants and other forlorn travelers. Of all the people there,
+I observed but two who were agreeable to the eye: a young girl,
+admirably modish, and her mother. But even looking at this girl I
+remained depressed. "_You_ don't belong here," I wished to say to her,
+"that's clear enough. No one like you could live in such a place. You
+needn't think _I_ live here, either; for I don't! Most decidedly I
+don't!"
+
+We got into a taxi, my companion and I, and the taxi started immediately
+to climb with us, like a mountain goat, ascending a steep hill in leaps,
+over an atrocious pavement, and between vacant lots and shabby buildings
+which seemed to me to presage an undeveloped town and, worse yet, a bad
+hotel.
+
+My companion must have thought as I did, for I remember his saying in a
+somber tone: "I guess we're in for it this time, all right!"
+
+Those are the first words that I recall his having spoken that morning.
+
+After ascending for some time, we began to coast down again, still
+through unprepossessing thoroughfares, until at last we slid up in the
+mud to the door of the Hotel Baltimore--one of the busiest hotels in the
+whole United States.
+
+On sight of the hotel I took a little heart. Breakfast was near and the
+hostelry looked promising. It was, indeed, the first building that I saw
+in Kansas City, that seemed to justify "City."
+
+The coffee at the Baltimore proved good. We saw that we were in a large
+and capably conducted caravansary--a metropolitan hotel with a dining
+room like some interior in the capitol of Minnesota, and a Pompeian
+room, the very look of which bespoke a cabaret performance at a later
+hour. From the window where we sat at breakfast we saw wagons with
+brakes set, descending the hill, and streams of people hurrying on their
+way to work: sturdy-looking men and healthy-looking girls, the latter
+stamped with that cheap yet indisputable style so characteristic of the
+young American working woman--a sort of down-at-the-heels showiness in
+dress, which, combined with an elaborate coiffure and a fine, if
+slightly affected carriage, makes her at once a pretty and pathetic
+object.
+
+In Kansas City one is well within the borders of the land of silver
+dollars. Dollar bills are scarce. Pay for a cigar with a $5 bill, and
+your change is more than likely to include four of those silver
+cartwheels which, though merely annoying in ordinary times, must be a
+real source of danger when the floods come, as one understands they
+sometimes do in Kansas City. Not only are small bills scarce but, I
+fancy, the humble copper cent is viewed in Kansas City with less respect
+than in the East. I base this conclusion upon the fact that a dignified
+old negro, wearing a bronze medal suspended from a ribbon tied about his
+neck, charged me five cents at the door of the dining room for a
+one-cent paper--a rate of extortion surpassing that of New York hotel
+news stands. However, as that paper was the Kansas City "Star," I raised
+no objection; for the "Star" is a great newspaper. But of that
+presently.
+
+Later I found fastened to the wall of my bathroom something which, as I
+learned afterward, is quite common among hotels in the West, but which I
+have never seen in an eastern hotel--a slot machine which, for a
+quarter, supplies any of the following articles: tooth paste, listerine,
+cold cream, bromo lithia, talcum powder, a toothbrush, a shaving stick,
+or a safety razor.
+
+Counterbalancing this convenience, however, I found in my room but one
+telephone instrument, although Kansas City is served by two separate
+companies. This proved annoying; calls coming by the Missouri & Kansas
+Telephone Company's lines reached me in my room, but those coming over
+the wires of the Home Telephone Company had to be answered downstairs,
+whither I was summoned twice that morning--once from my bath and once
+while shaving. I had not been in Kansas City half a day before
+discovering that monopoly--at least in the case of the telephone--has
+its very definite advantages. A double system of telephones is a
+nuisance. Even where, as for instance in Portland, Oregon, there are two
+instruments in each room, one never knows which bell is ringing.
+Duplication is unnecessary, and where there are two companies, lack of
+duplication is annoying. Every home or office in Kansas City provided
+with but one instrument is cut off from communication with many other
+homes and offices having the other service, while those having both
+instruments have to pay the price of two.
+
+It always amuses me to hear criticisms by foreigners of the telephone as
+perfected in this country. And our sleeping cars and telephones are the
+things they invariably do criticize. As to the sleeping car there may be
+some justice in complaints, although it seems to me that, under the
+conditions for which it is designed, the Pullman car would be hard to
+improve upon. It is the necessity of going to bed while traveling by
+rail that is at the bottom of the trouble. But when a foreigner
+criticizes the American telephone the very thing he criticizes is its
+perfection. If we had bad telephone service, and didn't use the
+telephone much, it would be all right, according to the European point
+of view. But as it is, they say we are the instrument's "slaves."
+
+That was the complaint of Dr. George Brandes, the Danish literary
+critic. "The telephone is the worst instrument of torture that ever
+existed," he declared. "The medieval rack and thumb-screws were
+playthings compared with it."
+
+Arnold Bennett, in his "Your United States," tells of having permanently
+removed the receiver from the telephone in his bedroom in a Chicago
+hotel. His action, he declares, caused agitation, not merely in the
+hotel, but throughout the city.
+
+"In response to the prayer of a deputation from the management," he
+writes, "I restored the receiver. On the horrified face of the
+deputation I could read the unspoken query: 'Is it conceivable that you
+have been in this country a month without understanding that the United
+States is primarily nothing but a vast congeries of telephone cabins?'"
+
+Now, the thing which Mr. Bennett, Dr. Brandes, and many other
+distinguished visitors from Europe seem to fail to comprehend is this:
+that, being distinguished visitors, and therefore sought after, they are
+the telephone's especial victims, and consequently gain a wrong
+impression of it. They themselves use it little as a means of calling
+others; others use it much as a means of calling them. Furthermore,
+being strangers to this highly perfected instrument, they are also,
+quite naturally strangers to telephonic subtleties. Mr. Bennett proved
+his entire lack of knowledge of the new science of telephone tact when
+he tried to stop the instrument by removing the receiver. Any American
+could have told him that all he need have done was to notify the
+operator, at the switchboard, downstairs, not to permit him to be
+disturbed until a certain hour. Or, if he had wished to do so, he could
+have asked her to sift his messages, giving him only those she deemed
+desirable. He would have found her, I feel sure, as capable, on that
+score, as a well-trained private secretary, for, among the many
+effective services of the telephone, none is finer than that given by
+those capable, intelligent, quick-thinking young women who act as
+switchboard operators in large hotels and offices. I am glad of this
+opportunity to make my compliments to them.
+
+If an American wishes to appreciate the telephone, as developed in this
+country, he has but to try to use the telephone in Europe. In London the
+instrument is a ridiculous, cumbersome affair, looking as much like an
+enormous metal inkwell as any other thing--the kind of inkwell in which
+some emperor might dip his pen before signing his abdication. To call,
+you wind the crank violently for a time, then taking up the receiver and
+mouthpiece which are attached to the main instrument by a cord, you
+begin calling: "Are you there, miss? Are you there? I say, miss, _are_
+you there?" And the question is quite reasonable, for half the time
+"miss" does not seem to be there. In Paris it is worse. Once, while
+residing in that city, I had a telephone in my apartment. It was
+intended as a convenience, but it turned out to be an irritating kind of
+joke. The first time I tried to call my house, from the center of town,
+it took me three times as long to get the connection as it took me to
+get New York from Kansas City. In the beginning I thought myself the
+victim of ill luck, but I soon came to understand that was not the
+case--or, rather, that the ill luck was of a kind experienced by all
+users of the telephone in Paris. The service there is simply chaotic. It
+is actually true that I once dispatched a messenger on a bicycle,
+calling my house on the phone, immediately afterward, and that the
+messenger had arrived with the note, after having ridden a good two
+miles, through traffic, by the time I succeeded in talking over the
+wire. However, in the interim I had talked with almost every other
+residence in Paris.
+
+The telephones in France and England are controlled by the government.
+If that accounts for the service given, then I hope the government in
+this country will never take them over. Bureaucracy makes the
+Continental railroads inferior to ours, and I have no doubt it is
+equally responsible for telephone conditions. Bureaucracy, as I have
+experienced it, feels itself intrenched in office, and is consequently
+likely to be indifferent to complaint and to the requirements of
+progress. When I called New York from Kansas City I was talking within
+ten minutes, and when, later on, I called New York from Denver, it took
+but little longer, and I heard, and made myself heard, almost as though
+conversing with some one in the next room. As I reflect upon the
+countless services performed for me by the telephone, upon these
+travels, and upon the very different sort of service I should have had
+abroad, I bless the American Telephone and Telegraph Company with
+fervent blessings. And if I said about it all the things I really think,
+I fear the reader might suspect me of having received a bribe. For I am
+aware that, in speaking well of any corporation I am flying in the face
+of precedent and public opinion.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Toward noon, the pall of smoke and fog which had blanketed the city,
+vanished on a fresh breeze from the prairies, and my companion and I,
+much inspirited, set forth on foot to see what the downtown streets of
+Kansas City had to offer. We had gone hardly a block before we realized
+that our earlier impressions of the place had been ill-founded. We had
+arrived in the least agreeable portion of the city, and had not,
+hitherto, seen any of the built-up, well-paved streets. "Petticoat
+Lane"--the fashionable shopping district on Eleventh Street between Main
+Street and Grand Avenue--has a metropolitan appearance, and the wider
+avenues, with their well-built skyscrapers, tell a story of
+substantiality and progress. But the most striking thing to us, upon
+that walk, lay not in the great buildings already standing, but in the
+embryonic structures everywhere. All over Kansas City old buildings are
+coming down to make place for new ones; hills of clay are being gouged
+away and foundations dug; steel frames are shooting up. Never, before or
+since, have I sensed, as I sensed that day, a city's growth. It seemed
+to me that I could feel expansion in the very ground beneath my feet.
+Looking upon these multifarious activities was like looking through an
+enormous magnifying glass at some gigantic ant hill, where thousands
+upon thousands of workers were rushing about, digging, carrying,
+constructing, all in breathless haste. Nor was the incidental music
+lacking; the air was ringing with the symphony of work--the music of
+brick walls falling, of drills digging at the earth, and of automatic
+riveters clattering their swift, metallic song, high up among the tall,
+steel frames, where presently would stand desks, and filing cabinets,
+and typewriter machines.
+
+"Did you ever feel a city growing so?" I asked of my companion.
+
+"Grow!" he repeated. "Why it has grown so fast they haven't had time to
+name their streets."
+
+The statement appeared true. We had looked for street signs at all
+corners, but had seen none. Later, however, we discovered that the
+streets did have names. But as there are no signs, I conclude that the
+present names are only tentative, and that when Kansas City gets through
+building, she will name her streets in sober earnest, and mark them in
+order that strangers may more readily find their way.
+
+The "slogan" of Kansas City suggests that of Detroit. Detroit says: "In
+Detroit life is worth living." Kansas City is less boastful, but more
+aspiring. "Make it a good place to live in," she says.
+
+As nearly as I can like the "slogan" of any city, I like that one. I
+like it because it is not vainglorious, and because it does not attempt
+cheap alliteration. It is not "smart-alecky" at all, but has, rather,
+the sound of something genuinely felt. And I believe it is felt. There
+is every evidence that Kansas City's "slogan" is a promissory note--a
+note which, it may be added, she is paying off in a handsome manner, by
+improving herself rapidly in countless ways.
+
+Perhaps the first of her improvements to strike the visitor is her
+system of parks. I am informed that the parked boulevards of Kansas City
+exceed in mileage those of any other American city. These boulevards,
+connecting the various parks and forming circuits running around and
+through the town, do go a long way toward making it "a good place to
+live in." Kansas City has every right to be proud, not only of her
+parks, but of herself for having had the intelligence and energy to make
+them. What if assessments have been high? Increased property values take
+care of that; the worst of the work and the expense is over, and Kansas
+City has lifted itself by its own bootstraps from ugliness to beauty.
+How much better it is to have done the whole thing quickly--to have made
+the gigantic effort and attained the parks and boulevards at what
+amounts to one great municipal bound--than to have dawdled and dreamed
+along as St. Louis and so many other cities have done.
+
+The Central Traffic Parkway of St. Louis is, as has been said in an
+earlier chapter, still on paper only. But the Paseo, and West Pennway,
+and Penn Valley Park, in Kansas City, are all splendid realities,
+created in an amazingly brief space of years. To make the Paseo and West
+Pennway, the city cut through blocks and blocks, tearing down old houses
+or moving them away, with the result that dilapidated, disagreeable
+neighborhoods have been turned into charming residence districts. In the
+making of Penn Valley Park, the same thing occurred: the property was
+acquired at a cost of about $800,000, hundreds of houses were removed,
+drives were built, trees planted. The park is now a show place; both
+because of the lesson it offers other cities, and the splendid view,
+from its highest point, of the enterprising city which created it.
+
+Another spectacular panorama of Kansas City is to be seen from
+Observation Point on the western side of town, but the finest views of
+all (and among the finest to be seen in any city in the world) are those
+which unroll themselves below Scaritt Point, the Cliff Drive, and Kersey
+Coates Drive. Much as the Boulevard Lafayette skirts the hills beside
+the Hudson River, these drives make their way along the upper edge of
+the lofty cliffs which rise majestically above the Missouri River
+bottoms. Not only is their elevation much greater than that of the New
+York boulevard, but the view is infinitely more extensive and dramatic,
+though perhaps less "pretty." Looking down from Kersey Coates Drive, one
+sees a long sweep of the Missouri, winding its course between the sandy
+shores which it so loves to inundate. Beyond, the whole world seems to
+be spread out--farms and woodland, reaching off into infinity.
+
+[Illustration: Looking down from Kersey Coates Drive, one sees ... the
+appalling web of railroad tracks, crammed with freight cars, which seen
+through a softening haze of smoke, resemble a relief map--strange, vast,
+and pictorial]
+
+Below, in the nearer foreground, at the bottom of the cliff, is the mass
+of factories, warehouses and packing houses, and the appalling web of
+railroad tracks, crammed with freight cars, which form the Kansas City
+industrial district, and which, reduced by distance, and seen through a
+softening haze of smoke, resemble a relief map--strange, vast, and
+pictorial. Beyond, more distant and more hazy, lies the adjoining city,
+Kansas City, Kas., all its ugliness converted into beauty by the smoke
+which, whatever sins it may commit against white linen, spreads a poetic
+pall over the scenes of industry--yes, and over the "wettest block,"
+that solid wall of saloons with which the "wet" state of Missouri so
+significantly fortifies her frontier against the "dry" state, Kansas.
+
+So far, Kansas City has been too busy with her money-making and her
+physical improvement, to give much thought to art. However, the day will
+come, and very soon, when the question of mural decoration for some
+great public building will arise. And when that day does come I hope
+that some one will rise up and remind the city that the decorations
+which, figuratively, adorn her own walls, may well be considered as a
+subject for mural paintings. I should like to see a great room which,
+instead of being surrounded by a frieze of symbolic figures, very much
+like every other frieze of symbolic figures in the land, should show the
+splendid sweep of the Missouri River, and the great maze of the freight
+yards, and the wonderful vistas to be seen from the cliffs, and the
+rich, rolling farm land beyond. How much better that would be than one
+of those trite things representing Justice or Commerce, as a female
+figure, enthroned, with Industry, a male figure, brown and half-naked,
+wearing a leather apron, and beating on an anvil, at one side, and
+Agriculture, working with a hoe, at the other. Yes, how much better it
+would be; and how much harder to find the painter who could do it as it
+should be done.
+
+In view of the enormous activity with which Kansas City has pursued the
+matter of municipal improvement, and in view of the contrasting
+somnolence of St. Louis, it is amusing to reflect upon the somewhat
+patronizing attitude assumed by the latter toward the former. Being the
+metropolis of Missouri, St. Louis has the air, sometimes, of patting
+Kansas City on the back, in the same superior manner that St. Paul
+assumed, in times gone by, toward Minneapolis. It will be remembered,
+however, that one day St. Paul woke up to find herself no longer the
+metropolis of Minnesota. Young Minneapolis had come up behind and passed
+her in the night. As I have said before, Kansas City bears more than one
+resemblance to Minneapolis. Like Minneapolis, she is a strong young
+city, vying for State supremacy with another city which is old, rich,
+and conservative. Will the history of the Minnesota cities be repeated
+in Missouri? If some day it happens so, I shall not be surprised.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ODDS AND ENDS
+
+
+The quality in Kansas City which struck Baron d'Estournelles de
+Constant, the French statesman and peace advocate, was the enormous
+growth and vitality of the place. "Town Development" quotes the Baron as
+having called Kansas City a "_cite champignon_," but I am sure that in
+saying that he had in mind the growth of the mushroom rather than its
+fiber; for though Kansas City grew from nothing to a population of
+250,000 within a space of fifty years, her fiber is exceptionally firm,
+and her prosperity, having been built upon the land, is sound.
+
+That feeling of nearness to the soil that I met there was new to me. I
+felt it in many ways. Much of the casual conversation I heard dealt with
+cattle raising, farming, the weather, and the promise as to crops.
+Business men and well-to-do women in the shopping districts resemble
+people one may see in any other city, but away from the heart of town
+one encounters numerous farmers and their wives who have driven into
+town in their old buggies, farm wagons, or little motors to shop and
+trade, just as though Kansas City were some little county seat, instead
+of a city of the size of Edinburgh.
+
+In earlier chapters I have referred to likenesses between cities and
+individuals. Cities not only have traits of character, like men, but
+certain regions have their costumes. Collars, for example, tend to
+become lower toward the Mississippi River, and black string ties appear.
+Missouri likes black suits--older men in the smaller towns seem to be in
+a perpetual state of mourning, like those Breton women whose men are so
+often drowned at sea that they never take the trouble to remove their
+black.
+
+Western watch chains incline to massiveness, and are more likely than
+not to have dangling from them large golden emblems with mysterious
+devices. Likewise the western buttonhole is almost sure to bloom with
+the insignia of some secret order.
+
+Many western men wear diamond rings--pieces of jewelry which the east
+allots to ladies or to gamblers and vulgarians. When I inquired about
+this I heard a piece of interesting lore. I was informed that the
+diamond ring was something more than an adornment to the western man;
+that it was, in reality, the survival of a fashion which originated for
+the most practical reasons. A diamond is not only convenient to carry
+but it may readily be converted into cash. So, in the wilder western
+days, men got into the way of wearing diamond rings as a means of
+raising funds for gambling on short notice, or for making a quick
+getaway from the scene of some affray.
+
+Whether they are entirely aware of it or not, the well-dressed men of
+eastern cities are, in the matter of costume, dominated to a large
+extent by London. The English mode, however, does not reach far west.
+Clothing in the west is all American. Take, for example, coats. The
+prevailing style, at the moment, in London and in the eastern cities of
+this country happens to run to a snugness of fit amounting to actual
+tightness. Little does this disturb the western man. His coat is cut
+loose and is broad across the shoulders. And let me add that I believe
+his vision is "cut" broader, too. Westerners, far more than easterners,
+it seems to me, sense the United States--the size of it and what it
+really is. Time and again, talking with them, it has come to me that
+their eyes are focused for a longer range: that, looking off toward the
+horizon, they see a thousand miles of farms stretched out before them or
+a thousand miles of mountain peaks.
+
+And even as coats and comprehension seem to widen in the west, so hats
+and hearts grow softer. The derby plays an unimportant part. In Chicago,
+to be sure, it makes a feeble effort for supremacy, but west of there it
+dies an ignominious death beneath an avalanche of soft felt hats. Felt
+hats around Chicago seem, however, to lack full-blown western opulence.
+Compared with hats in the real middle west, they are stingy little
+headpieces. When we were in Chicago that city seemed to be the center of
+a section in which a peculiar style of hat was prominent--a blue felt
+with a velvet band. But that, of course, was merely a passing fashion.
+Not so the hats a little farther west. The Mississippi River marks the
+beginning of the big black hat belt. The big black hat is passionately
+adored in Missouri and Kansas. It never changes; never goes out of
+fashion. And it may be further noted that many of these somber,
+monumental, soft black hats, with their high crowns and widespread
+brims, have been sent from these two western states to Washington, D. C.
+
+At Kansas City there begins another hat belt. The Missouri hat remains,
+but its supremacy begins to be disputed by an even larger hat, of
+similar shape but different color. The big black, tan or putty-color hat
+begins to show at Kansas City. Also one sees, now and again, upon the
+streets a cowboy hat with a flat brim. When I mentioned that to a Kansas
+City man he didn't seem to like it. With passionate vehemence he
+declared that cowboy hats were never known to adorn the heads of Kansas
+City men--that they only came to Kansas City on the heads of itinerant
+cattlemen. Well, that is doubtless true. But I did not say the Mayor of
+Kansas City wore one. I only said I saw such hats upon the street.
+And--however they got there, and wherever they came from--those hats
+looked good to me!
+
+Some of the bronzed cattlemen one sees in Kansas City, though they yield
+to civilization to the extent of wearing shirts, have not yet sunk to
+the slavery of collars. They do not wear "chaps" and revolvers, it is
+true, but they are clearly plainsmen, and some of them sport colored
+handkerchiefs about their necks, knotted in the back, and hanging in
+loose folds in front. Once or twice, upon my walks, I saw an Indian as
+well, though not a really first-class moving-picture Indian. That is too
+much to expect. Such Indians as one may meet in Kansas City are
+civilized and citified to a sad degree. Nor are the Mexicans, many of
+whom are employed as laborers, up to specifications as to
+picturesqueness.
+
+I feel it particularly necessary to state these truths, disillusioning
+though they may be to certain youthful readers who may treasure fond
+hopes of finding, in Kansas City, something of that wild and woolly
+fascination which the cinematograph so often pictures. True, a large
+gray wolf was killed by a Kansas City policeman last winter, after it
+had run down Linwood Boulevard, biting people, but that does not happen
+every day, and it is recorded that the youth who recently appeared on
+the Kansas City streets, dressed in "chaps" and carrying a revolver with
+which he shot at the feet of pedestrians, to make them dance, declared
+himself, when taken up by the police, to have recently arrived from
+Philadelphia, where he had obtained his ideas of western manners from
+the "movies."
+
+I mention this incident because, after having labeled Kansas City
+"Western," I wish to leave no loopholes for misunderstanding. The West
+of Bret Harte and Jesse James is gone. All that is left of it is legend.
+When I speak of a western city I think of a city young, not altogether
+formed, but full of dauntless energy. And when I speak of western people
+I think of people who possess, in larger measure than any other people
+I have met, the solid traits of character which make human beings
+admirable.
+
+Kansas City is said to be more American than any other city of its size
+in the United States. Eighty per cent. of its people are American born,
+of either native or foreign parents. Its inhabitants are either
+pioneers, descendants of pioneers, or young people who have moved there
+for the sake of opportunity. This makes for sturdy stock as inevitably
+as close association with the soil makes for sturdy simplicity of
+character. The western man, as I try to visualize him as a type, is
+genuine, generous, direct, whole-hearted, sympathetic, energetic,
+strong, and--I say it not without some hesitation--sometimes a little
+crude, with a kind of crudeness which has about it something very
+lovable. I fear that Kansas City may not like the word "crude," even as
+I have qualified it, but, however she may feel, I hope she will not
+charge the use of it to eastern snobbishness in me, for that is a
+quality that I detest as much as anybody does--a quality compared with
+which crudeness becomes a primary virtue. No; when I say "crude" I say
+it respectfully, and I am ready to admit in the same breath that I
+dislike the word myself, because it seems to imply more than I really
+wish to say, just as such a word as "unseasoned" seems to imply less.
+
+You see, Kansas City is a very young and very great center of business.
+It is still engrossed in making money, but, being so exceptionally
+sturdy, it has found time, outside of business hours, as it were, to
+create its parks and boulevards--much as some young business man comes
+home after a hard day's work and cuts the grass in his front yard, and
+waters it, and even plants a little garden for his wife and children and
+himself. He attends to the requirements of his business, his family, his
+lawn and garden, and to his duties as a citizen. And that is about all
+that he has time to do. He has the Christian virtues, but none of the
+un-Christian sophistications. Art, to him, probably signifies a "fancy
+head" by Harrison Fisher; literature, a book by Harold Bell Wright or
+Gene Stratton Porter; music, a sentimental ballad or a ragtime tune
+played on the Victor; architecture--well, I think that means his own
+house.
+
+And what is his own house like? If he be a young and fairly successful
+Kansas City business man, it is, first of all, probably a solid,
+well-built house. Very likely it is built of brick and is
+"detached"--just barely detached--and faces a parked boulevard or a
+homelike residence street which is lined with other solid little houses,
+like his own. Now, while the homes of this class are, I think, better
+built and more attractive than homes of corresponding cost in some older
+cities--Cleveland, for example--and while the streets are pleasanter,
+there is a sort of standardized look about these houses which is, I
+think, unfortunate. The thing they lack is individuality. Whole rows of
+them suggest that they were all designed by the same altogether honest,
+but somewhat inartistic, architect, who, having hit on one or two good
+plans, kept repeating them, ad infinitum, with only minor changes, such
+as the use of vari-colored brick, for "character." True, they are
+monuments to the esthetic, compared with the old brownstone blocks of
+New York City, or the Queen Anne blocks of cities such as Cleveland, but
+it must be remembered that New York's brownstone period, and the wooden
+Queen Anne period, date back a good many years, whereas these Kansas
+City houses are new. And it is in our new houses that we Americans have
+had a chance to show (and are showing) the improvement in our national
+taste. I do not complain that the domestic architecture of Kansas City
+represents no improvement; I complain only that the improvement shown is
+not so great as it should be--that Kansas City residences, of all
+classes, inexpensive and expensive, in town and in the suburban
+developments, are generally characterized by solidity, rather than
+architectural merit. The less expensive houses lack distinction in about
+the same way that rows of good ready-made overcoats may be said to lack
+it, when compared with overcoats made to order by expensive tailors. The
+more costly houses are for the most part ordinary--and some of them are
+worse than that.
+
+I am well aware of the fact that the foregoing statements are altogether
+likely to surprise and annoy Kansas City, for if there is one thing,
+beyond her parks and boulevards, upon which she congratulates herself
+peculiarly, it is her homes. I could detect that, both in the pride
+with which the homes were shown to me and in the sad silences with which
+my very mildly critical comments on some houses, were received.
+Nevertheless, it is quite true that Kansas City very evidently needs a
+good domestic architect or two; and if she does not pardon me just now
+for saying so, I must console myself with the thought that, ten or
+fifteen years hence, she will admit that what I said was true.
+
+Kansas City ought to be a good place for architects. There is a lot of
+money there, and, as I have already said, a great amount of building is
+in progress. One of the most interesting real estate developments I have
+ever seen is taking place in what is called the Country Club District,
+where a tract of 1,200 acres, which, only five or six years ago, was
+farm land, has been attractively laid out and very largely built up on
+ingenious, restricted lines. In the portion of this district known as
+Sunset Hill, no house costing less than $25,000 may be erected. As a
+matter of fact, a number of houses on Sunset Hill show an investment, in
+building alone, of from $50,000 to $100,000. In other portions of the
+tract restrictions are lower, and still lower, until finally one comes
+to a suburban section closely built up with homes, some of which cost as
+little as $3,000--which is the lowest restriction in the entire
+district.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I visited the new Union Station, which will be in operation this winter.
+It is as fine as the old station is atrocious. I was informed that it
+cost between six and seven millions, and that it is exceeded in size
+only by the Grand Central and Pennsylvania terminals in New York. The
+waiting room will, however, be the largest in the world. The gentleman
+who showed me the station gave me the curious information that Kansas
+City does the largest Pullman business of any American city, and that it
+also handles the most baggage. He attributed these facts to the great
+distances to be traveled in that part of the country and also to the
+prosperity of the farmers.
+
+"You see," he said, "Kansas City has the largest undisputed tributary
+trade territory of any city in the country. We are not, in reality, a
+Missouri city so much as a Kansas one. Indeed Kansas City was originally
+intended to be in Kansas and was really diverted into Missouri when the
+government survey established the line between the two states. We reach
+out into Missouri for some business, but Kansas is our real territory,
+as well as Oklahoma and Arkansas. We get a good share of business from
+Nebraska and Iowa, too. These facts, plus the fact that we are in the
+very center of the great American feed lot, account for our big bank
+clearings. In bank clearings we come sixth, St. Louis being fifth,
+Pittsburgh seventh, and Detroit eighth. And we are not to be compared in
+population with any of those cities.
+
+"Almost all our greatest activities have to do with farms and produce.
+We are first as a market place for hay and yellow pine; second as a
+packing center and a mule market; third in lumber, flour, poultry, and
+eggs, in the volume of our telegraph business, and in automobile sales.
+And, of course, you probably know that we lead in the sale of
+agricultural implements and in stockers and feeders."
+
+At that my companion, who, because he resided for a long time in Albany,
+N. Y., prides himself upon his knowledge of farming, broke in.
+
+"I suppose," said he, "that instead of drawing stockers and feeders with
+horses, they use gasoline motors now-a-days?"
+
+"Oh, no," said the Kansas City man, "they walk."
+
+"Walk?" exclaimed my companion. "They _have_ made an advance in
+agricultural implements since my day if they have succeeded in making
+them _walk_!"
+
+"I'm not speaking of agricultural implements," said our informant. "I'm
+speaking of stockers and feeders."
+
+"What are stockers and feeders?" I asked.
+
+"Cattle," he said. "There are three kinds of cattle marketed here;
+first, fat cattle, for slaughter; second, stockers, which are young cows
+used for stocking farms and ranches; third, feeders, or grassfed steers,
+which are sold to be fattened on grain, for killing. In stockers and
+feeders we lead the world; in fat cattle we are second only to
+Chicago."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+COLONEL NELSON'S "STAR"
+
+
+"What do you expect to see in Kansas City?" I was asked by the president
+of a trust company.
+
+"I want to see the new Union Station," I said, "and I hope also to meet
+Colonel Nelson."
+
+He smiled. "One's as big as the other," was his comment.
+
+That is a mild statement of the case. The power of Colonel Nelson is
+something unique, and his newspaper, the Kansas City "Star," is, I
+believe, alone in the position it holds among American dailies.
+
+Like all powerful newspapers, it is the expression of a single
+individuality. The "Star" expresses Colonel William Rockhill Nelson as
+definitely as the New York "Sun" used to express Charles A. Dana, as the
+New York "Tribune" expressed Horace Greeley, as the "Herald" expressed
+Bennett, as the Chicago "Tribune" expressed Medill, as the
+"Courier-Journal" expresses Watterson, as the Pulitzer papers continue
+to express the late Joseph Pulitzer, and as the Hearst papers express
+William Randolph Hearst.
+
+Besides circulating widely throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and
+western Missouri, the "Star" so dominates Kansas City that last year it
+sold, in the city, many thousand papers a day in excess of the number of
+houses there. Other papers have been started to combat it, but without
+appreciable effect. The "Star" continues upon its majestic course,
+towing the wagon of Kansas City.
+
+To me the greatest thing about the "Star" is its entire freedom from
+yellowness. Its appearance is as conservative as that of the New York
+"Evening Post." It prints no scareheads and no half-tone pictures, such
+pictures as it uses being redrawn in line, so that they print sharply.
+Another characteristic of the paper is its highly localized flavor. It
+handles relatively little European news, and even the doings of New York
+and Chicago seem to impress it but slightly. It is the organ of the
+"feed lot," the "official gazette" of the capital of the Southwest.
+
+While contemplating the "Star" I was reminded of a conversation held
+many weeks before in Buffalo with a very thoughtful gentleman.
+
+"The great trouble with the American people," he declared, "is that they
+are not yet a thinking people."
+
+"What makes you believe that?" I asked.
+
+"The first proof of it," he returned, "is that they read yellow
+journals."
+
+It is a notable and admirable fact that the people of Kansas--the State
+which Colonel Nelson considers particularly his own--do not read the
+"yellows" to any considerable extent. ("I might stop publishing this
+paper," Colonel Nelson said, "but it will never get yellow." And later:
+"Anybody can print the news, but the 'Star' tries to build things up.
+That is what a newspaper is for.")
+
+Even the "Star" building is highly individualized. It is a great solid
+pile of tapestry brick, suggesting a castle in Siena. In one end are the
+presses; in the other the business and editorial departments. The
+editorial offices are in a single vast room, in a corner of which the
+Colonel's flat-top desk is placed. There are no private offices. The
+city editor and his reporters have their desks at the center, under a
+skylight, and the editorial writers, telegraph editor, Sunday editor,
+and all the other editors are distributed about the room's perimeter.
+
+Before talking with Colonel Nelson I inquired into some of the reforms
+brought about through the efforts of the "Star." The list of them is
+formidable. Many persons attributed the existence of the present park
+and boulevard system to this great newspaper; among other things
+mentioned were the following: the improvement of schools; the abolition
+of quack doctors, medical museums and fortune tellers; the building of
+county roads; the elimination of bill-boards from the boulevards; the
+boat line navigating the Missouri River; the introduction of commission
+government in Kansas City, Kas. (which, I was informed, was the first
+city of its size to have commission government); the municipal ownership
+of waterworks in both Kansas Cities. More recently the "Star" has been
+fighting for what it terms "free justice"--that is, the dispensing of
+justice without costs or attorneys' fees, as it is already dispensed in
+the "small debtors" courts of Kansas City and through the free legal-aid
+bureau. Colonel Nelson says: "'Free justice' would take the judicial
+administration of the law out of the hands of privately paid attorneys
+and place it wholly in the hands of courts officered by the public's
+servants.
+
+[Illustration: Colonel Nelson is a "character." Even if he didn't own
+the "Star," ... he would be a "character."... I have called him a
+volcano; he is more like one than any other man I have ever met]
+
+"In the great majority of cases justice is still not free. A man must
+hire his lawyer. So justice is not only not free but not equal. A poor
+owner of a legal right gives a $5 fee to a $5 lawyer. A rich defender of
+a legal wrong gives a $5,000 fee to a $5,000 lawyer. The scales of a
+purchased justice tip to the wrong side. Or, even if the owner of the
+legal right gets his right established by the court, he still must
+divide the value of it with his attorney. The administration of justice
+should be as free as the making of laws. It should be as free as police
+service."
+
+The "Star" has been hammering away at this idea for months, precisely as
+it has been hammering at political corruption, wherever found. Another
+"Star" crusade is for a 25-acre park opposite the new Union Station,
+instead of the small plaza originally planned--the danger in the case of
+the latter being that, although it does provide some setting for the
+station, it yet permits cheap buildings to encroach to a point
+sufficiently near the station to materially detract from it.
+
+Many lawyers disapprove of the "free justice" idea; all the politically
+corrupt loathe the "Star" for obvious reasons; and some taxpayers may be
+found who cry out that Colonel Nelson pushes Kansas City into
+improvements faster than she ought to go. Nevertheless, as with the
+"Post-Dispatch" in St. Louis, the "Star" is read alike by those who
+believe in it and those who hate it bitterly.
+
+As an outsider fascinated by the "Star's" activities, I came away with
+the opinion that Colonel Nelson's power was perhaps greater than that of
+any other single newspaper publisher in the country; that it was perhaps
+too great for one man to wield, but that, exercised by such a pure
+idealist as the Colonel unquestionably is, it has been a blessing to the
+city. Nor can I conceive how even the bitterest enemies of Colonel
+Nelson can question his motives.
+
+Will Irwin, who knows about newspapers if anybody does, said to me: "The
+'Star' is not only one of the greatest newspapers in the world, but it
+is a regular club. I know of no paper anywhere where the personnel of
+the men is higher. I will give you a letter to Barton. He will introduce
+you around the office, and the office will do the rest."
+
+I found these prognostications true. Inside a few hours I felt as though
+I, too, had been a "Star" man. "Star" men took me to "dinner"--meaning
+what we in the East call "luncheon"; took me to see the station, put me
+in touch with endless stories of all sorts--all with the kindliest and
+most disinterested spirit. They told me so much that I could write half
+a dozen chapters on Kansas City.
+
+Take, for example, the story of the Convention Hall. It is a vast
+auditorium, taking up, as I recall it, a whole block. It was built for
+the Democratic National Convention in 1900, but burned down immediately
+after having been completed; whereupon Kansas City turned in, raised the
+money all over again, and in about ten weeks' time completely rebuilt
+it. There Bryan was nominated for the second time. Or, consider the
+story of the "Harvey System" of hotels and restaurants on the Santa Fe
+Road. The headquarters of this eating-house system is in Kansas City,
+and offers a fine field for a story all by itself, for it has been the
+biggest single influence in civilizing hotel life and in raising
+gastronomic standards throughout the west.
+
+But these are only items by the way--two among the countless things that
+"Star" men told me of, or showed me. And, of course, the greatest thing
+they showed me was right in their own office: their friend, their
+"boss," that active volcano, seventy-three years old, who comes down
+daily to his desk, and whose enthusiasm fires them all.
+
+Colonel Nelson is a "character." Even if he didn't own the "Star," even
+if he had not the mind he has, he would be a "character," if only by
+virtue of his appearance. I have called him a volcano; he is more like
+one than any other man I have ever met. He is even shaped like one,
+being mountainous in his proportions, and also in the way he tapers
+upward from his vast waist to his snow-capped "peak." Furthermore, his
+face is lined, seamed, and furrowed in extraordinary suggestion of those
+strange, gnarled lava forms which adorn the slopes of Vesuvius. Even the
+voice which proceeds from the Colonel's "crater" is Vesuvian: hoarse,
+deep, rumbling, strong. When he speaks, great natural forces seem to
+stir, and you hope that no eruption may occur while you are near, lest
+the fire from the mountain descend upon you and destroy you.
+
+"Umph!" rumbled the volcano as it shook hands with my companion and me.
+"You're from New York? New York is running the big gambling house and
+show house for the country. It doesn't produce anything. It doesn't take
+any more interest in where the money comes from than a gambler cares
+where you get the money you put into his game.
+
+"Kansas is the greatest state in the Union. It thinks. It produces
+things. Among other things, it produces crazy people. It is a great
+thing to have a few crazy people around! Roosevelt is crazy. Umph! So
+were the men who started the Revolution to break away from England.
+
+"Most of the people in the United States don't think. They are
+indifferent and apathetic. They don't want to work. One of our 'Star'
+boys went to an agricultural college to see what was going on there.
+What did he find out? Why, that instead of making farmers they were
+making professors. Yes. Pretty nearly the entire graduating class went
+there to learn to teach farming. That's not what we want. We want
+farmers."
+
+The Colonel's enemies have tried, on various occasions, to "get" him,
+but without distinguished success. The Colonel goes into a fight with
+joy. Once, when he was on the stand as a witness in a libel suit which
+had been brought against his paper, a copy of the editorial containing
+the alleged libel was handed to him by the attorney for the prosecution.
+
+"Colonel Nelson," said the attorney, menacingly, "did you write this?"
+
+"No, sir!" bristled the Colonel with apparent regret at the forced
+negation of his answer, "but I subscribe to every word of it!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Once the Colonel's enemies almost succeeded in putting him in jail.
+
+A "Star" reporter wrote a story illustrating the practice of the Jackson
+County Circuit Court in refusing to permit a divorce case to be
+dismissed by either husband or wife until the lawyers in the case had
+received their fees. The "Star" contended that such practice, where the
+couple had made up their quarrel, made the court, in effect, a
+collection agency. Through a technical error the story, as printed,
+seemed to refer to the judge of one division of the court when it should
+have applied to another. The judge who was, through this error,
+apparently referred to, seized the opportunity to issue a summons
+charging Colonel Nelson with contempt of court.
+
+Colonel Nelson, who had known nothing of the story until he read it in
+print, not only went to the front for his reporter, but caused the story
+to be reprinted, with the added statement that it was true and that he
+had been summonsed on account of it.
+
+When he appeared in court the judge demanded an apology. This the
+Colonel refused to give, but offered to prove the story true. The judge
+replied that the truth of the story had nothing to do with the case. He
+permitted no evidence upon that subject to be introduced, but, drawing
+from his pocket some typewritten sheets, proceeded to read from them a
+sentence, condemning the Colonel to one day in jail. This sentence he
+then ordered the sheriff to execute.
+
+However, before the sheriff could do so, a lawyer, representing the
+Colonel, ran upstairs and secured from the Court of Appeals, in the same
+building, a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that the decision of the
+lower judge had been prepared before he heard the evidence. This the
+latter admitted. Thus the Colonel was saved from jail--somewhat, it is
+rumored, to his regret. Later the case was dismissed by the Supreme
+Court of Missouri.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+An attorney representing the gas company, against which the "Star" had
+been waging war, called on the Colonel one day to complain of injustices
+which he alleged the company was suffering at the hands of the paper.
+
+"Colonel Nelson," he said, "your young men are not being fair to the gas
+company."
+
+"Let me tell you," said the Colonel, "that if they were I'd fire them!"
+
+"Why, Colonel Nelson!" said the dismayed attorney. "Do you mean to say
+you don't want to be fair?"
+
+"Yes, sir!" said the Colonel. "When has your company been fair to Kansas
+City? When you are fair my young men will be fair!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+If there is one thing about the "Star" more amazing than another, it is
+perhaps the effect it can produce by mere negative action--that is, by
+ignoring its enemies instead of attacking them. In one case a man who
+had made most objectionable attacks on Colonel Nelson personally, was
+treated to such a course of discipline, with the result, I was informed,
+that he was ultimately ruined.
+
+The "Star" did not assail him. It simply refused to accept advertising
+from him and declined to mention his name or to refer to his
+enterprises.
+
+When the victim of this singular reprisal was writhing under it, a
+prominent citizen called at Colonel Nelson's office to plead with the
+Colonel to "let up."
+
+"Colonel," he protested, "you ought not to keep after this man. It is
+ruining his business."
+
+"Keep after him?" repeated the Colonel. "I'm not keeping after him. For
+me he doesn't exist."
+
+"That's just the trouble," urged the mediator. "Now, Colonel, you're
+getting to be an old man. Wouldn't you be happier when you lay down at
+night if you could think to yourself that there wasn't a single man in
+Kansas City who was worse off because of any action on your part?"
+
+At that occurred a sudden eruption of the old volcano.
+
+"By God!" cried the Colonel. "I couldn't sleep!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+KEEPING A PROMISE
+
+
+     _The shades of night were falling fast,
+     As through a western landscape passed
+     A car, which bore, 'mid snow and ice,
+     Two trav'lers taking this advice:
+                     Visit Excelsior Springs!_
+
+
+Have you ever heard of the city of Excelsior Springs, Missouri? I never
+had until the letters began to come. The first one reached me in
+Detroit. It told me that Excelsior Springs desired to be "written up,"
+and offered me, as an inducement to come there, the following arguments:
+paved streets, beautiful scenery, three modern, fire-proof hotels,
+flourishing lodges, live churches, fine saddle horses, an eighteen-hole
+golf course ("2d to none," the letter said) four distinct varieties of
+mineral water, and--Frank James.
+
+The mention of Frank James stirred poignant memories of my youth:
+recollections of forbidden "nickel novels" dealing with the wild deeds
+alleged to have been committed by the James Boys, Frank and Jesse, and
+their "Gang." I used to keep these literary treasures concealed behind a
+dusty furnace pipe in the cellar of the old house in Chicago. On rainy
+days I would steal down and get them, and, retiring to some
+out-of-the-way corner of the attic, would read and re-read them in a
+kind of ecstasy of horror--a horror which was enhanced by the eternal
+fear of being discovered with such trash in my possession.
+
+I had not thought of the James Boys in many years. But when I got that
+letter, and realized that Frank James was still alive, the old stories
+came flooding back. As with Maeterlinck and Hinky Dink, the James Boys
+seemed to me to be fictitious figures; beings too wonderful to be true.
+The idea of meeting one of them and talking with him seemed hardly less
+improbable than the idea of meeting Barbarossa, Captain Kidd, Dick
+Turpin, or Robin Hood. I began to wish to visit Excelsior Springs.
+
+Before I had a chance to answer the first letter others came. Mr. W. E.
+Davy, Chief Correspondent of the Brotherhood of American Yeomen, wrote
+that, "Excelsior Springs is one of the most picturesque and interesting
+spots in that portion of the country." Ban B. Johnson, president of the
+American Baseball League, also wrote, declaring, "I believe Excelsior
+Springs to be the greatest watering place on the American continent."
+Then came letters from business men, Congressmen and Senators, until it
+began to seem to me that the entire world had dropped its work and taken
+up its pen to impress upon me the vital need of a visit to this little
+town. The letters came so thick that, from St. Louis, I telegraphed the
+Secretary of the Excelsior Springs Commercial Club to say that, if he
+would let up on me, I would agree to come. After that the letters
+stopped as though by magic. Until I reached Kansas City I heard no more
+about Excelsior Springs. There, however, a deputation called to remind
+me of my promise, and a few days later the same deputation returned and
+escorted my companion and me to the interurban car, and bought our
+tickets, and checked our trunks, and put us in our seats, and sat beside
+us watchfully, like detectives taking prisoners to jail. For though I
+had promised we would come, it must not be forgotten that they were from
+Missouri.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Excelsior Springs is a busy, pushing little town of about five thousand
+inhabitants, situated in Clay County, Missouri, about thirty miles from
+Kansas City. The whole place has been built up since 1880, on the
+strength of the mineral waters found there--and when you have tasted
+these waters you can understand it, for they are very strong indeed. But
+that is putting the thing bluntly. Listen, then, to the booklet issued
+by the Excelsior Springs Commercial Club:
+
+     Even as 'truth is stranger than fiction,' so the secrets of Nature
+     are even more wonderful than the things wrought by the hands of
+     man. Just why it pleased the Creator of the Universe to install one
+     of His laboratories here and infuse into its waters curative powers
+     which surpass the genius and skill of all the physicians in
+     Christendom is a question which no one can answer. Like the stars,
+     the flowers, and the ocean, it is merely one of the
+     great eternal verities with which we are surrounded. Whither and
+     whence no man knows.
+
+Having paid this fitting compliment to the Creator, the pamphleteer
+proceeds to expatiate upon the joys of the place:
+
+     There are cool, shaded parks and woodlands, where you can sit under
+     the big, spreading trees which shut out the hot summer's sun--where
+     you can loll on blankets of thickly matted blue grass and read and
+     sleep to your heart's content--far from the madding crowd and the
+     world's fierce strife and turmoil.... Here the golf player will
+     find one of the finest golf links his heart would desire. The
+     fisherman will find limpid streams where the wary black bass lurks
+     behind moss-covered rocks.... Here you and your wife can vie at
+     tennis, bowling, horseback riding, and a dozen other wholesome
+     exercises, and when the shadows of the night have fallen there are
+     orchestras which dispense sweet music and innumerable picture shows
+     and other forms of entertainment which will while away the fleeting
+     moments until bedtime.
+
+Though the writer of the above prose-poem chose to assume that the
+imaginary being to whom he addresses himself is a married man, the
+reader must not jump to the conclusion that Excelsior Springs is a
+resort for married couples only, that the married are obliged to run in
+pairs, or that those who have been joined in matrimony are, for any
+reason, in especial need of healing waters. If unmarried persons are not
+so welcome at the Springs as married couples, that is only because a
+couple spends more money than an individual. The unmarried are cordially
+received. And I may add, from personal observation, that the married
+man or woman who arrives alone can usually arrange to "vie at tennis,
+bowling, horseback riding, and a dozen other wholesome exercises" with
+the husband or the wife of some one else. In short, Excelsior Springs is
+like most other "resorts." But all this is by the way. The waters are
+the main thing. The paved streets, the parks, the golf links, even Frank
+James, sink into comparative insignificance compared with the natural
+beverages of the place. The Commercial Club desires that this be clearly
+understood, and seems, even, to resent the proximity of Frank James, as
+a rival attraction to the waters, as though under an impression that no
+human being could stomach both. Before I departed from the Springs some
+members of the Commercial Club became so alarmed at the interest I was
+showing in the former outlaw that they called upon me in a body and
+exacted from me a solemn promise that I should on no account neglect to
+write about the waters. I agreed, whereupon I was given full information
+regarding the waters by a gentleman bearing the appropriate name of
+Fish.
+
+Mr. Fish informed me that the waters of Excelsior Springs resemble, in
+their general effect, the waters of Homburg, the favorite watering place
+of the late King Edward--or, rather, I think he put it the other way
+round: that Homburg waters resembled those of Excelsior Springs. The
+famous Elizabethbrunnen of Homburg is like a combination of two waters
+found at the Missouri resort--a saline water and an iron water, having,
+together, a laxative, alterative, and tonic effect. Mr. Fish, who has
+made a study of waters, says that Excelsior Springs has the greatest
+variety of valuable mineral waters to be found in this country, and that
+the town possesses two among the half dozen iron-manganese springs being
+used, commercially, in the entire world. Duplicates of these springs are
+to be found at Schwalbach and Pyrmont, in Germany; Spa, in Belgium, and
+St. Moritz, in Switzerland. The value of manganese when associated with
+iron is that it makes the iron more digestible.
+
+Another type of water found at the Springs is of a saline-sulphur
+variety, such as is found at Saratoga, Blue Lick (Ky.), Ems, and
+Baden-Baden. Still another type is the soda water similar to that of
+Manitou (Colo.), Vichy, and Carlsbad, while a fourth variety of water is
+the lithia.
+
+In 1881 the present site of the town was occupied by farms, one of them
+that of Anthony Wyman, on whose land the original "Siloam" iron spring
+was discovered. This spring, the water of which left a yellow streak on
+the ground as it flowed away, had been known for years among the negro
+farm hands as the "old pizen spring," and it is said that when they were
+threshing wheat in the fields, and became thirsty, none of them dared
+drink from it.
+
+Rev. Dr. Flack, a resident of the neighborhood, having heard about the
+spring, took a sample of the water and sent it to be analyzed--as my
+informant put it, "to find out what was the matter with it." The
+analysis showed the reason for the yellow streak, and informed Dr. Flack
+of the spring's value.
+
+From that time on people began to drive to the Springs in the
+stagecoaches that passed through the region. First there were camps, but
+in 1882 a few houses were built and the town was incorporated. In 1888
+the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad began to operate a line
+through Excelsior Springs, and in 1894 the Wabash connected with the
+Springs by constructing a spur line. The Milwaukee & St. Paul tracks
+pass at a distance of about one mile from the town, and this fact
+finally caused the late Sam F. Scott to build a dummy line to the
+station.
+
+I was told that Mr. Scott had handsome passes engraved, and that he sent
+these to the presidents of all the leading railroad companies of the
+country, requesting an exchange of courtesies. According to this story,
+Mr. Scott received a reply from Alexander Cassatt, then president of the
+Pennsylvania system, saying that he was unable to find Mr. Scott's road
+in the Railroad Directory, and asking for further information. To this
+letter, it is said, Mr. Scott replied: "My road is not so long as yours,
+but it is just as wide." Perhaps I should add that, later, I heard the
+same story told of the president of a small Colorado line, and that
+still later I heard it in connection with a little road in California.
+It may be an old story, but it was new to me, and I hereby fasten it
+upon the town where I first heard it.
+
+Excelsior Springs is the headquarters of the Bill Club, which has come
+in for humorous mention, from time to time, in newspapers throughout the
+land. The Bill Club is a national organization, the sole requirement for
+membership having originally consisted in the possession of the cognomen
+"William" and the payment of a dollar bill. Bill Sisk of Excelsior
+Springs is president of the Bill Club, Bill Hyder is secretary, and Bill
+Flack treasurer. By an amendment of the Bill Club constitution, "any
+lady who has been christened Willie, Wilena, Wilhelmine, or Williamette,
+may also join the Bill Club." The pass word of the organization is
+"Hello, Bill," and among the honorary members are ex-President Bill
+Taft, Secretary of State Bill Bryan, Senators Bill Warner and Bill Stone
+of Missouri, Bill Hearst, Colonel Bill Nelson, publisher of the Kansas
+City "Star," and Bill Bill, a hat manufacturer, of Hartford, Conn.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The head waiter at our hotel was a beaming negro. As my companion and I
+came down to breakfast on our first morning there, he met us at the
+door, led us across the dining room, drew out our chairs, and, as we sat
+down, inquired, pleasantly:
+
+"Well, gentamen, how did you enjoy yo' sleep?"
+
+We both assured him that we had slept well.
+
+"Yes, suh; yes, suh," he replied. "That's the way it most gen'ally is
+down here. People either sleeps well or they don't."
+
+After breakfast we were taken in a motor to the James farm, nine miles
+distant from the town. Never have I seen more charming landscapes than
+those we passed upon this drive. An Englishman at Excelsior Springs told
+me that the landscapes reminded him of home, but to me they were not
+English, for they had none of that finished, gardenlike formality which
+one associates with the scenery of England. The country in that part of
+Missouri is hilly, and spring was just commencing when we were there,
+touching the feathery tips of the trees with a color so faint that it
+seemed like a light green mist. It was a warm, sunny day, and the breeze
+sweet with the smell of growing things. There was no haze, the air was
+clear, yet by some subtle quality in the light, colors, which elsewhere
+might have looked raw, were strangely softened and made to blend with
+one another. Blatant red barns, green houses, and the bright blue
+overalls worn by farm hands in the fields, did not jump out of the
+picture, but melted into it harmoniously, keeping us in a constant state
+of amazement and delight.
+
+"If you think it's pretty now," our guardians told us, "you ought to see
+it in the summer when the trees are at their best."
+
+Of course such landscapes must be fine in summer, but the beauty of
+summer is an obvious kind of beauty, like that of some splendid opulent
+woman in a rich evening gown. Summer seems to me to be a little bit too
+sure of her beauty, a little too well aware of its completeness. The
+beauty of very early spring is different; there is something frail
+about it; something timid and faltering, which makes me think of a young
+girl, delicate and sweet, who, knowing that she has not reached
+maturity, looks forward to her womanhood and remains unconscious of her
+present virgin loveliness. No, I am sure that I should never love that
+Missouri landscape as I loved it in the early spring, and I am sure that
+such a painter as W. Elmer Schofield would have loved it best as I saw
+it, and that Edward Redfield or Ernest Lawson would prefer to paint it
+in that aspect than in any other which it could assume. I should like to
+see them paint it, and I should also like to see their paintings shown
+to Kansas and Missouri.
+
+What would Kansas and Missouri make of them? Very little, I fear. For
+(with the exception of St. Louis) those two States seem to be devoid of
+all feeling for art. I doubt that there is a public art gallery in the
+whole State of Kansas, or a private collection of paintings worth
+speaking of. As for western Missouri, I could learn of no paintings
+there, save some full-sized copies, in oil, of works of old masters,
+which were presented to Kansas City by Colonel Nelson. These copies are
+exceptionally fine. They might form the nucleus for a municipal gallery
+of art--a much better nucleus than would be formed by one or two actual
+works of old masters--but Kansas City hasn't "gotten around to art," as
+yet, apparently. The paintings are housed in the second story of a
+library building, and several people to whom I spoke had never heard of
+them.
+
+[Illustration: Mr. Fish informed me that the waters of Excelsior Springs
+resemble the waters of Homburg, the favorite watering place of the late
+King Edward--or, rather, I think he put it the other way round]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE TAME LION
+
+
+The James farm occupies a pretty bit of rolling land, at one corner of
+which, near the road, Frank James has built himself a neat, substantial
+frame house.
+
+Before the house is a large gate, bearing a sign as follows:
+
+    JAMES FARMS
+    HOME OF THE JAMES'
+    JESSE AND FRANK
+    ADMISSION 50C.
+    KODAKS BARED
+
+That word "bared" is not bad proofreading; it was spelled like that on
+the sign.
+
+As we moved in the direction of the house a tall, slender old man with a
+large hooked nose and a white beard and mustache walked toward us. He
+was dressed in an exceedingly neat suit and wore a large black felt hat
+of the type common throughout Missouri. Coming up, he greeted our escort
+cordially, after which we were introduced. It was Frank James.
+
+The former outlaw is a shrewd-looking, well preserved man, whose
+carriage, despite his seventy-one years, is notably erect. He looks more
+like a prosperous farmer or the president of a rural bank than like a
+bandit. In his manner there is a strong note of the showman. It is not
+at all objectionable, but it is there, in the same way that it is there
+in Buffalo Bill. Frank James is an interesting figure; on meeting him
+you see, at once, that he knows he is an interesting figure and that he
+trades upon the fact. He is clearly an intelligent man, but he has been
+looked at and listened to for so many years, as a kind of curiosity,
+that he has the air of going through his tricks for one--of getting off
+a line of practised patter. It is pretty good patter, as patter goes,
+inclining to quotation, epigram, and homely philosophy, delivered in an
+assured "platform manner."
+
+It may be well here to remind the reader of the history of the James
+Gang.
+
+The father and mother of the "boys" came from Kentucky to Missouri. The
+father was a Baptist minister and a slaveholder. He died before the war,
+and his widow married a man named Samuels, by whom she had several
+children.
+
+From the year 1856 Missouri, which was a slave state, warred with
+Kansas, which was a free state, and there was much barbarity along the
+border. The "Jayhawkers," or Kansas guerrillas, would make forays into
+Missouri, stealing cattle, burning houses, and committing all manner of
+depredations; and lawless gangs of Missourians would retaliate, in kind,
+on Kansas. Among the most appalling cutthroats on the Missouri side was
+a man named Quantrell, head of the Quantrell gang, a body of guerrillas
+which sometimes numbered upward of a thousand men. The James boys were
+members of this gang, Frank James joining at the opening of the Civil
+War, and Jesse two years later, at the age of sixteen. In speaking of
+joining Quantrell, Frank James spoke of "going into the army." Quantrell
+was, however, a mere border ruffian and was disowned by the Confederate
+army.
+
+According to Frank James, Quantrell, who was born in Canal Dover, Ohio,
+went west, with his brother, to settle. In Kansas they were set upon by
+"Jayhawkers" and "Redlegs," with the result that Quantrell's brother was
+killed and that Quantrell himself was wounded and left for dead. He was,
+however, nursed to life by a Nez Perce Indian. When he recovered he
+became determined to have revenge upon the Kansans. To that end, he
+affected to be in sympathy with them, and joined some of their marauding
+bands. When he had established himself in their confidence he used to
+get himself sent out on scouting expeditions with one or two other men,
+and it was his amiable custom, upon such occasions, to kill his
+companions and return with a story of an attack by the enemy in which
+the others had met death. At last, when he had played this trick so
+often that he feared detection, he determined to get himself clear of
+his fellows. A plan had been matured for an attack upon the house of a
+rich slaveholder. Quantrell went to the house in advance, betrayed the
+plan, and arranged to join forces with the defenders. This resulted in
+the death of his seven or eight companions. At about this time the war
+came on, and Quantrell became a famous guerrilla leader, falling on
+detached bodies of Northern troops and massacring them, and even
+attacking towns--one of his worst offenses having been the massacre of
+most of the male inhabitants of Lawrence, Kas. He gave as the reason for
+his atrocities his desire for revenge for the death of his brother, and
+also used to allege that he was a Southerner, though that was not true.
+
+I asked Frank James how he came to join Quantrell, when the war broke
+out, instead of enlisting in the regular army.
+
+"We knew he was not a very fine character," he explained, "but we were
+like the followers of Villa or Huerta: we wanted to destroy the folks
+that wanted to destroy us, and we would follow any man that would show
+us how to do it. Besides, I was young then. When a man is young his
+blood is hot; there's a million things he'll do then that he won't do
+when he's older. There's a story about a man at a banquet. He was
+offered champagne to drink, but he said: 'I want quick action. I'll take
+Bourbon whisky.' That was the way I felt. That's why I joined Quantrell:
+to get quick action. And I got it, too. Jesse and I were with Quantrell
+until he was killed in Kentucky."
+
+John Samuels, a half brother of the James boys, told me the story of how
+Jesse James came to join Quantrell.
+
+"Jesse was out plowing in a field," he said, "when some Northern
+soldiers came to the place to look for Frank. Jesse was only sixteen
+years old. They beat him up. Then they went to the house and asked where
+Frank was. Mother and father didn't know, but the soldiers wouldn't
+believe them. They took father out and hung him by the neck to a tree.
+After a while they took him down and gave him another chance to tell. Of
+course he couldn't. So they hung him up again. They did that three
+times. Then they took him back to the house and told my mother they were
+going to shoot him. She begged them not to do it, but they took him off
+in the woods and fired off their guns so she'd hear, and think they'd
+done it. But they didn't shoot him. They just took him over to another
+town and put him in jail. My mother didn't know until the next day that
+he hadn't been shot, because the soldiers ordered her to remain in the
+house if she didn't want to get shot, too.
+
+"That was too much for Jesse. He said: 'Maw, I can't stand it any
+longer; I'm going to join Quantrell.' And he did."
+
+After the war the wilder element from the disbanded armies and guerrilla
+gangs caused continued trouble. Crime ran rampant along the border
+between Kansas and Missouri. And for many crimes committed in the
+neighborhood in which they lived, the James boys, who were known to be
+wild, were blamed.
+
+"Mother always said," declared Mr. Samuels, "that Frank and Jesse wanted
+to settle down after the war, but that the neighbors wouldn't let them.
+Everything that went wrong around this region was always charged to
+them, until, finally, they were driven to outlawry."
+
+"How much truth is there in the different stories of bank robberies and
+train robberies committed by them?" I asked.
+
+"I don't know," he said. "Of course they did a lot of things. But we
+never knew. They never said anything. They'd just come riding home,
+every now and then, and stop for a while, and then go riding away again.
+We never knew where they came from or where they went."
+
+It has been alleged that even after a reward of $10,000 had been offered
+for either of the Jameses, dead or alive, the neighbors shielded them
+when it was known that they were at home. I spoke about that to an old
+man who lived on a nearby farm.
+
+"Yes," he said, "that's true. Once when the Pinkertons were hunting them
+I met Frank and some members of the gang riding along the road, not far
+from here. I could have told, but I didn't want to. I wasn't looking for
+any trouble with the James Gang. Suppose they had caught one or two of
+them? There'd be others left to get even with me, and I had my family to
+think of. That is the way lots of the neighbors felt about it. They were
+afraid to tell."
+
+I spoke to Frank James about the old "nickel novels."
+
+"Yes," he said, "some fellows printed a lot of stuff. I'd have stopped
+it, maybe, if I'd had as much money as Rockefeller. But what could I
+do? I tell you those yellow-backed books have done a lot of harm to the
+youth of this land--those and the moving pictures, showing robberies.
+Such things demoralize youth. If I had the job of censoring the moving
+pictures, they'd say I was a reg'lar Robespierre!"
+
+[Illustration: We strolled in the direction of the old house, that house
+of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times.... It was
+there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb.]
+
+"How about some of the old stories of robberies in which you were
+supposed to have taken part?" I asked.
+
+"I neither affirm nor deny," Frank James answered, with the glibness of
+long custom. "If I admitted that these stories were true, people would
+say: 'There is the greatest scoundrel unhung!' and if I denied 'em,
+they'd say: 'There's the greatest liar on earth!' So I just say
+nothing."
+
+According to John Samuels, Frank James and Cole Younger were generally
+acknowledged to be the brains of the James Gang. "It was claimed," he
+said, "that Frank planned and Jesse executed. Frank was certainly the
+cool man of the two, and Jesse was a little bit excitable. He had the
+name of being the quickest man in the world with a gun. Sometimes when
+he was home for a visit, when I was a boy, he'd be sitting there in the
+house, and there'd come some little noise. Then he'd whip out his pistol
+so quick you couldn't see the motion of his hand."
+
+As we conversed we strolled in the direction of the old house, that
+house of tragedy in which the family lived in the troublous times. On
+the way we passed Frank James's chicken coop, and I noticed that on it
+had been painted the legend: "Bull Moose--T. R."
+
+"The wing, at the back, is the old part of the house," James explained.
+"It was there that the Pinkertons threw the bomb."
+
+I asked about the bomb throwing and heard the story from John Samuels,
+who was there when it occurred.
+
+"I was a child of thirteen then," he said, "and I was the only one in
+the room who wasn't killed or crippled. It happened at night. We had
+suspected for a long time that a man named Laird, who was working as a
+farm hand for a neighbor of ours named Askew on that farm over
+there"--he indicated a farmhouse on a nearby hill--"was a Pinkerton
+man, and that he was there to watch for Frank and Jesse. Well, one night
+he must have decided they were at home, for the house was surrounded
+while we were asleep. A lot of torches were put around in the yard to
+give light. Then the house was set on fire in seven places and a bomb
+was thrown in through this window." He pointed to a window in the side
+of the old log wing. "It was about midnight. My mother and little
+brother and I were in the room. Mother kicked the bomb into the
+fireplace before it went off. The fuse was sputtering. Maybe she even
+thought of throwing the thing out of the window again. Anyhow, when it
+exploded it blew off her forearm and killed my little brother."
+
+"Come in the house," invited Frank James. "We've got a piece of the bomb
+in there."
+
+We entered the old cabin. In the fireplace marks of the explosion are
+still visible. The piece of the bomb which they preserve is a
+bowl-shaped bit of iron, about the size of a bread-and-butter plate.
+
+"What was their idea in throwing the bomb?" I asked.
+
+"As near as we know," replied Frank James, "the Pinkertons figured that
+Jesse and I were sleeping in the front part of the house. You see,
+there's a little porch running back from the main house to the door of
+the old cabin. They must have figured that when the bomb went off we
+would run out on the porch to see what was the matter. Then they were
+going to bag us."
+
+"Well, did you run out?"
+
+"Evidently not," said Frank James.
+
+"Were you there?" I asked.
+
+"Some think we were and some think not," he said.
+
+An old man who had been constable of the township at the time the James
+boys were on the warpath had come up and joined us.
+
+"How about Askew?" I suggested. "I should have thought he would have
+been afraid to harbor a Pinkerton man."
+
+The old man nodded. "You'd of thought so, wouldn't you?" he agreed.
+"Askew was shot dead three months after the bomb throwing. He was
+carrying a pail of milk from the stable to the house when he got three
+bullets in the face."
+
+"Who killed him?" I asked.
+
+The old constable allowed his eyes to drift ruminatively over the
+neighboring hillsides before replying. Frank James and his half brother,
+who were standing by, also heard my question, and they, too, became
+interested in the surrounding scenery.
+
+"Well-l," said the old constable at last, "that's always been a
+question."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mr. Samuels told me details concerning the death of Jesse James.
+
+"Things were getting pretty hot for the boys," he said. "Big rewards had
+been offered for them. Frank was in hiding down South, and Jesse was
+married and living under an assumed name in a little house he had rented
+in St. Joe, Mo. That was in 1882. There had been some hints of trouble
+in the gang. Dick Little, one of the boys, had gotten in with the
+authorities, and it had been rumored that he had won the Ford boys over,
+too. Jesse had heard that report, but he had confidence in Charlie Ford.
+Bob Ford he didn't trust so much. Well, Charlie and Bob Ford came to St.
+Joe to see Jesse and his wife. They were sitting around the house one
+day, and Jesse's wife wanted him to dust a picture for her. He was
+always a great hand to help his wife. He moved a chair over under the
+picture, and before getting up on it to dust, he took his belt and
+pistols off and threw them on the bed. Then he got up on the chair.
+While he was standing there Bob Ford shot him in the back.
+
+"Well, Bob died a violent death a while after that. He was shot by a
+man named Kelly in a saloon in Creede, Colo. And Charlie Ford brooded
+over the killing of Jesse and committed suicide about a year later. The
+three Younger boys, who were members of the gang, too, were captured a
+while after, near Northfield, Minn., where they had tried to rob a bank.
+They were all sent up for life. Bob Younger died in the penitentiary at
+Stillwater, but Cole and Jim were paroled and not allowed to leave the
+State. Jim fell in love with a woman, but being an ex-convict, he
+couldn't get a license to marry her. That broke his heart and he
+committed suicide. Cole finally got a full pardon and is now living in
+Jackson County, Missouri. He and Frank are the only two members of the
+Gang who are left and the only two that didn't die either in the
+penitentiary or by violence. Frank was in hiding for years with a big
+price on his head. At last he gave himself up, stood trial, and was
+acquitted."
+
+Adherents of Bob Ford told a different story of the motives back of the
+killing of Jesse James. They contend that Jesse James thought Ford had
+been "telling things" and ought to be put out of the way, and that in
+killing Jesse, Ford practically saved his own life.
+
+Whatever may be the truth, it is generally agreed that the action of
+Jesse James in taking off his guns and turning his back on the Ford boys
+was unprecedented. He had never before been known to remove his weapons.
+Some people think he did it as a piece of bravado. Others say he did it
+to show the Ford boys that he trusted them. But whatever the occasion
+for the action it gave Bob Ford his chance--a chance which, it is
+thought, he would not have dared take when Jesse James was armed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+During the course of our visit Frank James "lectured," more or less
+constantly, touching on a variety of subjects, including the Mexican
+situation and woman suffrage.
+
+"The women ought to have the vote," he affirmed. "Look what we owe to
+the women. A man gets 75 per cent. of what goodness there is in him from
+his mother, and he owes at least 40 per cent. of all he makes to his
+wife. Yes, some men owe more than that. Some of 'em owe 100 per cent. to
+their wives."
+
+Ethics and morality seem to be favorite topics with the old man, and he
+makes free with quotations from the Bible and from Shakespeare in
+substantiation of his opinions.
+
+"City people," I heard him say to some other visitors who came while we
+were there, "think that we folks who live on farms haven't got no sense.
+Well, we may not know much, but what we do know we know darn well. We
+farmers _feed_ all these smart folks in the cities, so they ought to
+give us credit for knowing _some_thing."
+
+He can be dry and waggish as he shows himself off to those who come and
+pay their fifty cents. It was amusing to watch him and listen to him.
+Sometimes he sounded like an old parson, but his air of piety sat upon
+him grotesquely as one reflected on his earlier career. A prelate with
+his hat cocked rakishly over one ear could have seemed hardly more
+incongruous.
+
+[Illustration: It was Frank James.... He looks more like a prosperous
+farmer or the president of a rural bank than like a bandit. In his
+manner there is a strong note of the showman]
+
+At some of his virtuous platitudes it was hard not to smile. All the
+time I was there I kept thinking how like he was to some character of
+Gilbert's. All that is needed to make Frank James complete is some
+lyrics and some music by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There are almost as many stories of the James Boys and their gang to be
+heard in Excelsior Springs as there are houses in the town. But as Frank
+James will not commit himself, it is next to impossible to verify them.
+However, I shall give a sample.
+
+I was told that Frank and Jesse James were riding along a country road
+with another member of the gang, and that, coming to a farmhouse shortly
+after noon, they stopped and asked the woman living there if she could
+give them "dinner"--as the midday meal is called in Kansas and Missouri.
+
+The woman said she could. They dismounted and entered. Then, as they sat
+in the kitchen watching her making the meal ready, Jesse noticed that
+tears kept coming to her eyes. Finally he asked her if anything was
+wrong. At that she broke down completely, informing him that she was a
+widow, that her farm was mortgaged for several hundred dollars, and that
+the man who held the mortgage was coming out that afternoon to collect.
+She had not the money to pay him and expected to lose her property.
+
+"That's nothing to cry about," said Jesse. "Here's the money."
+
+To the woman, who had not the least idea who the men were, their visit
+must have seemed like one from angels. She took the money, thanking them
+profusely, and, after having fed them well, saw them ride away.
+
+Later in the day, when the holder of the mortgage appeared upon the
+scene, fully expecting to foreclose, he was surprised at receiving
+payment in full. He receipted, mounted his horse, and set out on his
+return to town. But on the way back a strange thing befell him. He was
+held up and robbed by three mysterious masked men.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+KANSAS JOURNALISM
+
+
+Everything I had ever heard of Kansas, every one I had ever met from
+Kansas, everything I had ever imagined about Kansas, made me anxious to
+invade that State. With the exception of California, there was no State
+about which I felt such a consuming curiosity. Kansas is, and always has
+been, a State of freaks and wonders, of strange contrasts, of
+individualities strong and sometimes weird, of ideas and ideals, and of
+apocryphal occurrences.
+
+Just think what Kansas has been, and has had, and is! Think of the
+border warfare over slavery which began as early as 1855; of settlers,
+traveling out to "bleeding Kansas" overland, from New England, merely to
+add their abolition votes; of early struggles with the soil, and of the
+final triumph. Kansas is to-day the first wheat State, the fourth State
+in the value of its assessed property (New York, Pennsylvania, and
+Massachusetts only outranking it), and the only State in the Union which
+is absolutely free from debt. It has a more American population, greater
+wealth and fewer mortgages per capita, more women running for office,
+more religious conservatism, more political radicalism, more students
+in higher educational institutions in proportion to its population, more
+homogeneity, more individualism, and more nasal voices than any other
+State. As Colonel Nelson said to me: "All these new ideas they are
+getting everywhere else are old ideas in Kansas." And why shouldn't that
+be true, since Kansas is the State of Sockless Jerry Simpson, William
+Allen White, Ed Howe, Walt Mason, Stubbs, Funston, Henry Allen, Victor
+Murdock, and Harry Kemp; the State of Susan B. Anthony, Carrie Nation,
+and Mary Ellen Lease--the same sweet Mary Ellen who remarked that
+"Kansas ought to raise less corn and more hell!"
+
+Kansas used to believe in Populism and free silver. It now believes in
+hot summers and a hot hereafter. It is a prohibition State in which
+prohibition actually works; a State like nothing so much as some
+scriptural kingdom--a land of floods, droughts, cyclones, and enormous
+crops; of prophets and of plagues. And in the last two items it has
+sometimes seemed to actually outdo the Bible by combining plague and
+prophet in a single individual: for instance, Carrie Nation, or again,
+Harry Kemp, "the tramp poet of Kansas," who is by way of being a kind of
+Carrie Nation of convention. Only last year Kansas performed one of her
+biblical feats, when she managed, somehow, to cause the water, in the
+deep well supplying the town of Girard, to turn hot. But that is nothing
+to what she has done. Do you remember the plague of grasshoppers? Not in
+the whole Bible is there to be found a more perfect pestilence than
+that one, which occurred in Kansas in 1872. One day a cloud appeared
+before the sun. It came nearer and nearer and grew into a strange,
+glistening thing. At midday it was dark as night. Then, from the air,
+the grasshoppers commenced to come, like a heavy rain. They soon covered
+the ground. Railroad trains were stopped by them. They attacked the
+crops, which were just ready to be harvested, eating every green thing,
+and even getting at the roots. Then, on the second day, they all arose,
+making a great cloud, as before, and turning the day black again. Nor
+can any man say whence they came or whither they departed.
+
+Among the homely philosophers developed through Kansas journalism
+several are widely known, most celebrated among them all being Ed Howe
+of the Atchison "Globe," William Allen White of the Emporia "Gazette,"
+and Walt Mason of the same paper.
+
+Howe is sixty years of age. He was owner and editor of the "Globe" for
+more than thirty years, but four years ago, when his paper gave him a
+net income of sixty dollars per day, he turned it over to his son and
+retired to his country place, "Potato Hill," whence he issues occasional
+manifestos.
+
+Some of Howe's characteristic paragraphs from the "Globe" have been
+collected and published in book form, under the title, "Country Town
+Sayings." Here are a few examples of his homely humor and philosophy:
+
+     So many things go wrong that we are tired of becoming indignant.
+
+     Watch the flies on cold mornings; that is the way you will feel and
+     act when you are old.
+
+     There is nothing so well known as that we should not expect
+     something for nothing, but we all do and call it hope.
+
+     When half the men become fond of doing a thing, the other half
+     prohibit it by law.
+
+     Sometimes I think that I have nothing to be thankful for, but when
+     I remember that I am not a woman I am content. Any one who is
+     compelled to kiss a man and pretend to like it is entitled to
+     sympathy.
+
+     Somehow every one hates to see an unusually pretty girl get
+     married. It is like taking a bite out of a very fine-looking peach.
+
+     What people say behind your back is your standing in the community
+     in which you live.
+
+     A really busy person never knows how much he weighs.
+
+Walt Mason is another Kansas philosopher-humorist. Recently he published
+in "Collier's Weekly" an article describing life, particularly with
+regard to prohibition and its effects, in his "hum town," Emporia.
+
+Emporia is probably as well known as any town of its size in the land.
+It has, as Mason puts it, "ten thousand people, including William Allen
+White." Including Walt Mason, then, it must have about eleven thousand.
+Mason's article told how Stubbs, on becoming Governor of Kansas,
+enforced the prohibition laws, and of the fine effect of actual
+prohibition in Emporia. "No town in the world," he declares, "wears a
+tighter lid. There is no drunkenness because there is nothing to drink
+stiffer than pink lemonade. You will see a unicorn as soon as you will
+see a drunken man in the streets of the town. Emporia has reared a
+generation of young men who don't know what alcohol tastes like, who
+have never seen the inside of a saloon. Many of them never saw the
+outside of one. They go forth into the world to seek their fortunes
+without the handicap of an acquired thirst. All Emporia's future
+generations of young men will be similarly clean, for the town knows
+that a tight lid is the greatest possible blessing and nobody will ever
+dare attempt to pry it loose."
+
+Having spent a year in the prohibition State of Maine, I was skeptical
+as to the feasibility of a practical prohibition. Prohibition in Maine,
+when I was there, was simply a joke--and a bad joke at that, for it
+involved bad liquor. Every man in the State who wanted drink knew where
+to get it, so long as he was satisfied with poor beer, or whisky of
+about the quality of spar varnish. Never have I seen more drunkenness
+than in that State. The slight added difficulty of getting drink only
+made men want it more, and it seemed to me that, when they got it, they
+drank more at a sitting than they would have, had liquor been more
+generally accessible.
+
+In Kansas it is different. There the law is enforced. Blind pigs hardly
+exist, and bootleggers are rare birds who, if they persist in
+bootlegging, are rapidly converted into jailbirds. The New York
+"Tribune" printed, recently, a letter stating that prohibition is a
+signal failure in Kansas, that there is more drinking there than ever
+before, and that "under the seats of all the automobiles in Kansas there
+is a good-sized canteen." Whether there is more drinking in Kansas than
+ever before, I cannot say. I do know, however, both from personal
+observation and from reliable testimony, that there is practically no
+drinking in the portions of the State I visited. As I am not a
+prohibitionist, this statement is nonpartizan. But I may add, after
+having seen the results of prohibition in Kansas, I look upon it with
+more favor. Indeed, I am a partial convert; that is, I believe in it for
+you. And whatever are your views on prohibition, I think you will admit
+that it is a pretty temperate State in which a girl can grow to
+womanhood and say what one Kansas girl said to me: that she never saw a
+drunken man until she moved away from Kansas.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three religious manifestations occurred while I was in Kansas. A negro
+preacher came out with a platform declaring definitely in favor of a
+"hot hell," another preacher affirmed that he had the answer to the "six
+riddles of the universe," and William Allen White came out with the news
+that he had "got religion."
+
+Now, if William Allen White of the Emporia "Gazette" really has done
+that, a number of consequences are likely to occur. For one thing, a
+good many Americans who follow, with interest, Mr. White's opinions, are
+likely also to follow him in this; and if they fail to do so
+voluntarily, they are likely to get religion stuffed right down their
+throats. If White decides that it is good for them, they'll get it,
+never fear! For White's the kind of man who gives us what is good for
+us, even if it kills us. Another probable result of White's coming out
+in the "Gazette" in favor of religion would be the simultaneous
+appearance, in the "Gazette," of anti-religious propaganda by Walt
+Mason. That is the way the "Gazette" is run. White is the proprietor and
+has his say as editor, but Walt Mason, who is associated with him on the
+"Gazette," also has _his_ say, and his say is far from being dictated by
+the publisher. White, for instance, favors woman suffrage; Mason does
+not. White is a progressive; Mason is a standpatter. White believes in
+the commission form of government, which Emporia has; Mason does not.
+Mason believes in White for Governor of Kansas, whereas White, himself,
+protests passionately that the "Gazette" is against "that man White."
+
+Says a "Gazette" editorial, apropos of a movement to nominate White on
+the Progressive ticket:
+
+     We are onto that man White. Perhaps he pays his debts. He may be
+     kind to his family. But he is not the man to run for Governor. And
+     if he is a candidate for Governor or for any other office, we
+     propose to tell the truth about him--how he robbed the county with
+     a padded printing bill, how he offered to trade off his support to
+     a Congressman for a Government building, how he blackmailed good
+     citizens and has run a bulldozing, disreputable newspaper in this
+     town for twenty years, and has grafted off business men and sold
+     fake mining stock and advocated anarchy and assassinations.
+
+     These are but a few preliminary things that occur to us as the
+     moment passes. We shall speak plainly hereafter. A word to the wise
+     gathers no moss.
+
+That is the way they run the Emporia "Gazette." It is a kind of forum in
+which White and Mason air their different points of view, for, as Mason
+said to me: "The only public question on which White and I agree is the
+infallibility of the groundhog as a weather prophet."
+
+White and Colonel Nelson of the Kansas City "Star" are great friends and
+great admirers of each other. One day they were talking together about
+politics.
+
+"I hear," said Colonel Nelson, "that Shannon (Shannon is the Democratic
+boss of Kansas City) says he wants to live long enough to go to the
+State Legislature and get a law passed making it only a misdemeanor to
+kill an editor."
+
+"Colonel," replied White, "I think such a law would be too drastic. I
+think editors should be protected during the mating season and while
+caring for their young. And, furthermore, I think no man should be
+allowed to kill more editors at any time than he and his family can
+eat."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+A COLLEGE TOWN
+
+
+It was about one o'clock in the afternoon when my companion and I
+alighted from the train in Lawrence, Kas., the city in which the
+Quantrell massacre occurred, as mentioned in a preceding chapter, and
+the seat of the University of Kansas.
+
+An automobile hack, the gasoline equivalent of the dilapidated
+horse-drawn station hack of earlier times, was standing beside the
+platform. We consulted the driver about luncheon.
+
+"You kin get just as good eating at the lunch room over by the other
+station," he said, "as you kin at the hotel, and 't won't cost you so
+much. They charge fifty cents for dinner at the Eldridge, and the lunch
+room's only a quarter. You kin get anything you want to eat there--ham
+and eggs, potatoes, all such as that."
+
+Somehow we were suspicious of the lunch room, but as we had to leave our
+bags at the other station, we told him we would look it over, got in,
+and drove across the town. The lunch room proved to be a one-story
+wooden structure, painted yellow, and supporting one of those "false
+fronts," representing a second story, which one sees so often in little
+western towns, and which of all architectural follies is the worst,
+since it deceives no one, makes only for ugliness, and is a sheer waste
+of labor and material.
+
+We did not even alight at the lunch room, but, despite indications of
+hurt feelings on the part of our charioteer, insisted on proceeding to
+the Eldridge House and lunching there, cost what it might.
+
+The Eldridge House stands on a corner of the wide avenue known as
+Massachusetts, the principal street, which, like the town itself,
+indicates, in its name, a New England origin. Lawrence was named for
+Amos Lawrence, the Massachusetts abolitionist, who, though he never
+visited Kansas, gave the first ten thousand dollars toward the
+establishment of the university.
+
+Alighting before the hotel, I noticed a building, diagonally opposite,
+bearing the sign, Bowersock Theater. Billboards before the theater
+announced that Gaskell & McVitty (Inc.) would present there a
+dramatization of Harold Bell Wright's "Shepherd of the Hills." As I had
+never seen a dramatization of a work by America's best-selling author,
+nor yet a production by Messrs. Gaskell & McVitty (Inc.), it seemed to
+me that here was an opportunity to improve, as at one great bound, my
+knowledge of the theater. One of the keenest disappointments of my trip
+was the discovery that this play was not due in Lawrence for some days,
+as I would even have stopped a night in the Eldridge House, if
+necessary, to have attended a performance--especially a performance in a
+theater bearing the poetic name of Bowersock.
+
+Rendered reckless by my disappointment, I retired to the Eldridge House
+dining room and ordered the fifty-cent luncheon. If it was the worst
+meal I had on my entire trip, it at least fulfilled an expectation, for
+I had heard that meals in western hotels were likely to be poor. It is
+only just to add, however, that a number of sturdy men who were seated
+about the room ate more heartily and vastly than any other people I have
+seen, excepting German tourists on a Rhine steamer. I envy Kansans their
+digestions. For my own part, I was less interested in my meal than in
+the waitresses. Has it ever struck you that hotel waitresses are a race
+apart? They are not like other women; not even like other waitresses.
+They are even shaped differently, having waists like wasps and bosoms
+which would resemble those of pouter pigeons if pouter pigeons' bosoms
+did not seem to be a part of them. Most hotel waitresses look to me as
+though, on reaching womanhood, they had inhaled a great breath and held
+it forever after. Only the fear of being thought indelicate prevents my
+discussing further this curious phenomenon. However, I am reminded that,
+as Owen Johnson has so truly said, American writers are not permitted
+the freedom which is accorded to their Gallic brethren. There is, I
+trust, however, nothing improper in making mention of the striking
+display of jewelry worn by the waitresses at the Eldridge House. All
+wore diamonds in their hair, and not one wore less than fifty thousand
+dollars' worth. These diamonds were set in large hairpins, and the show
+of gems surpassed any I have ever seen by daylight. Luncheon at the
+Eldridge suggests, in this respect, a first night at the Metropolitan
+Opera House in New York, and if it is like that at luncheon, what must
+it be at dinner time? Do they wear tiaras and diamond stomachers? I
+regret that I am unable to say, for, immediately after luncheon, I kept
+an appointment, previously made, with the driver of the auto hack.
+
+"Where do you boys want to go now?" he asked my companion and me as we
+appeared.
+
+"To the university," I said.
+
+"Students?" he asked, with kindly interest.
+
+Neither of us had been taken for a student in many, many years; the
+agreeable suggestion was worth an extra quarter to him. Perhaps he had
+guessed as much.
+
+The drive took us out Massachusetts Avenue, which, when it escapes the
+business part of town, becomes an agreeable, tree-bordered thoroughfare,
+reminiscent of New England. Presently our rattle-trap machine turned to
+the right and began the ascent of a hill so steep as to cause the driver
+to drop back into "first." It was a long hill, too; we crawled up for
+several blocks before attaining the plateau at the top, where stands the
+University of Kansas.
+
+The setting of the college surprised us, for, if there was one thing
+that we had expected more than another, it was that Kansas would prove
+absolutely flat. Yet here we were on a mountain top--at least they call
+it Mount Oread--with the valley of the Kaw River below, and what seemed
+to be the whole of Kansas spread round about, like a vast panoramic
+mural decoration for the university--a maplike picture suggesting those
+splendid decorations of Jules Guerin's in the Pennsylvania Terminal in
+New York.
+
+I know of no university occupying a more suitable position or a more
+commanding view, although it must be recorded that the university has
+been more fortunate in the selection of its site than in its
+architecture and the arrangement of its grounds. Like other colleges
+founded forty or fifty years ago, the University of Kansas started in a
+small way, and failed entirely to anticipate the greatness of its
+future. The campus seems to have "just growed" without regard to the
+grouping of buildings or to harmony between them, and the architecture
+is generally poor. Nevertheless there is a sort of homely charm about
+the place, with its unimposing, helter-skelter piles of brick and stone,
+its fine trees, and its sweeping view.
+
+It was principally with the purpose of visiting the University of Kansas
+that we stopped in Lawrence. We had heard much of the great, energetic
+state colleges, which had come to hold such an important place
+educationally, and in the general life of the Middle West and West, and
+had planned to visit one of them. Originally we had in mind the
+University of Wisconsin, because we had heard so much about it; later,
+however, it struck us that everybody else had heard a good deal about
+it, too, and that we had better visit some less widely advertised
+college. We hit on the University of Kansas because Kansas is the most
+typical American agricultural state, and also because a Kansan, whom we
+met on the train, informed us that "In Kansas we are hell on education."
+
+In detail I knew little of these big state schools. I had heard, of
+course, of the broadening of their activities to include a great variety
+of general state service, aside from their main purpose of giving some
+sort of college education, at very low cost, to young men and women of
+rural communities who desire to continue beyond the public schools. I
+must confess, however, that, aside from such great universities as those
+of Michigan and Wisconsin, I had imagined that state universities were,
+in general, crude and ill equipped, by comparison with the leading
+colleges of the East.
+
+If the University of Kansas may, as I have been credibly informed, be
+considered as a typical western state university, then I must confess
+that my preconceptions regarding such institutions were as far from the
+facts as preconceptions, in general, are likely to be. The University of
+Kansas is anything but backward. It is, upon the contrary, amazingly
+complete and amazingly advanced. Not only has it an excellent equipment
+and a live faculty, but also a remarkably energetic, eager student body,
+much more homogeneous and much more unanimous in its hunger for
+education than student bodies in eastern universities, as I have
+observed them.
+
+The University of Kansas has some three thousand students, about a
+thousand of them women. Considerably more than half of them are either
+partly or wholly self-supporting, and 12 per cent. of them earn their
+way during the school months. The grip of the university upon the State
+may best be shown by statistics--if I may be forgiven the brief use of
+them. Out of 103 counties in Kansas only seven were not represented by
+students in the university in the years 1910-12--the seven counties
+being thinly settled sections in the southwest corner of the State.
+Seventy-three percent. of last year's students were born in Kansas; more
+than a third of them came from villages of less than 2,000 population;
+and the father of one out of every three students was a farmer.
+
+Life at the university is comfortable, simple, and very cheap, the
+average cost, per capita, for the school year being perhaps $200,
+including school expenses, board, social expenses, etc., nor are there
+great social and financial gaps between certain groups of students, as
+in some eastern colleges. The university is a real democracy, in which
+each individual is judged according to certain standards of character
+and behavior.
+
+"Now and again," one young man told me, with a sardonic smile, "we get a
+country boy who eats with his knife. He may be a mighty good sort, but
+he isn't civilized. When a fellow like that comes along, we take him in
+hand and tell him that, aside from the danger of cutting his mouth, we
+have certain peculiar whims on the subject of manners at table, and
+that it is better for him to eat as we do, because if he doesn't it
+makes him conspicuous. Inside a week you'll see a great change in a boy
+of that kind."
+
+Not only is the cost to the student low at the University of Kansas, but
+the cost of operating the university is slight. In the year 1909-10 (the
+last year on which I have figures) the cost of operating sixteen leading
+colleges in the United States averaged $232 per student. The cost per
+student at the University of Kansas is $175. One reason for this low per
+capita cost is the fact that the salaries of professors at the
+University of Kansas are unusually small. They are too small. It is one
+of the reproaches of this rich country of ours that, though we are
+always ready to spend vast sums on college buildings, we pay small
+salaries to instructors; although it is the faculty, much more than the
+buildings, which make a college. So far as I have been able to
+ascertain, Harvard pays the highest maximum salaries to professors, of
+any American university--$5,500 is the Harvard maximum. California,
+Cornell, and Yale have a $5,000 maximum. Kansas has the lowest maximum I
+know of, the greatest salary paid to a professor there, according to
+last year's figures, having been $2,500.
+
+Before leaving New York I was told by a distinguished professor in an
+eastern university that the students he got from the West had, almost
+invariably, more initiative and energy than those from the region of the
+Atlantic seaboard.
+
+[Illustration: The campus seems to have "just growed."... Nevertheless
+there is a sort of homely charm about the place, with its unimposing,
+helter-skelter piles of brick and stone]
+
+"Just what do you mean by the West?" I asked.
+
+"In general," he replied, "I mean students from north and west of
+Chicago. If I show an eastern boy a machine which he does not
+understand, the chances are that he will put his hands in his pockets
+and shake his head dubiously. But if I show the same machine to a
+western boy, he will go right at it, unafraid. Western boys usually have
+more 'gumption,' as they call it."
+
+Brief as was my visit to the University of Kansas, I felt that there,
+indeed, was "gumption." And it is easy to account for. The breed of men
+and women who are being raised in the Western States is a sturdier breed
+than is being produced in the East. They have just as much fun in their
+college life as any other students do, but practically none of them go
+to college just "to have a good time," or with the even less creditable
+purpose of improving their social position. Kansas is still too near to
+first principles to be concerned with superficialities. It goes to
+college to work and learn, and its reason for wishing to learn are, for
+the most part, practical. One does not feel, in the University of
+Kansas, the aspiration for a vague culture for the sake of culture only.
+It is, above all, a practical university, and its graduates are notably
+free from the cultural affectations which mark graduates of some eastern
+colleges, enveloping them in a fog of pedantry which they mistake for an
+aura of erudition, and from which many of them never emerge.
+
+Directness, sincerity, strength, thoughtfulness, and practicality are
+Kansas qualities. Even the very young men and women of Kansas are not
+far removed from pioneer forefathers, and it must be remembered that the
+Kansas pioneer differed from some others in that he possessed a strain
+of that Puritan love of freedom which not only brought his forefathers
+to Plymouth, but brought him overland to Kansas, as has been said, to
+cast his vote for abolition. Naturally, then, the zeal which fired him
+and his ancestors is reflected in his children and his grandchildren.
+And that, I think, is one reason why Kansas has developed "cranks."
+
+Contrasting curiously with Kansas practicality, however, there must be
+among the people of that State another quality of a very different kind,
+which I might have overlooked had I not chanced to see a copy of the
+"Graduate Magazine," and had I not happened to read the list of names of
+graduates who returned to the university for the last commencement. The
+list was not a very long one, yet from it I culled the following
+collection of given names for women: Ava, Alverna, Angie, Ora, Amida,
+Lalia, Nadine, Edetha, Violetta, Flo, Claudia, Evadne, Nelle, Ola,
+Lanora, Amarette, Bernese, Minta, Juanita, Babetta, Lenore, Letha, Leta,
+Neva, Tekla, Delpha, Oreta, Opal, Flaude, Iva, Lola, Leora, and Zippa.
+
+Clearly, then, Kansas has a penchant for "fancy" names. Why, I wonder?
+Is it not, perhaps, a reaction, on the part of parents, against the
+eternal struggle with the soil, the eternal practicalities of farm life?
+Is it an expression of the craving of Kansas mothers for poetry and
+romance? It seems to me that I detect a wistful something in those names
+of Kansas' daughters.
+
+Much has been heard, in the last few years, of the "Wisconsin idea" of
+linking up the state university with the practical life of the people of
+the State. This idea did not originate in Wisconsin, however, but in
+Kansas, where as long ago as 1868 a law was passed making the chancellor
+of the university State Sealer of Weights and Measures. Since that time
+the connection between the State and its great educational institutions
+has continued to grow, until now the two are bound together by an
+infinite number of ties.
+
+For example, no municipality in Kansas may install a water supply,
+waterworks, or sewage plant without obtaining from the university
+sanction of the arrangements proposed. The dean of the University School
+of Medicine, Dr. S. J. Crumbine, is also secretary of the State Board of
+Health. It was Dr. Crumbine who started the first agitation against the
+common drinking cup, the roller towel, etc., and he succeeded in having
+a law passed by the State Legislature in Kansas abolishing these. He
+also accomplished the passage of a law providing for the inspection of
+hotels, and requiring, among other things, ten-foot sheets. All water
+analysis for the State is done at the university, as well as analysis in
+connection with food, drugs, etc., and student work is utilized in a
+practical way in connection with this state service, wherever possible.
+
+Passing through the laboratories, I saw many examples of this activity,
+and was shown quantities of samples of foods, beverages, and patent
+medicines, which had failed to comply with the requirements of the law.
+There was an artificial cider made up from alcohol and coal-tar dye; a
+patent medicine called "Spurmax," sold for fifty cents per package, yet
+containing nothing but colored Epsom salts; another patent medicine sold
+at the same price, containing the same material plus a little borax;
+bottles of "SilverTop," a beer-substitute, designed to evade the
+prohibition law--bottles with sly labels, looking exactly alike, but
+which, on examination, proved, in some cases, to have mysteriously
+dropped the first two letters in the word "unfermented." All sorts of
+things were being analyzed; paints were being investigated for
+adulteration; shoes were being examined to see that they conformed to
+the Kansas "pure-shoe law," which requires that shoes containing
+substitutes for leather be stamped to indicate the fact.
+
+"This law," remarks "The Masses," "is being fought by Kansas shoe
+dealers who declare it unconstitutional. Apparently the right to wear
+paper shoes without knowing it is another of our precious heritages."
+
+The same department of the university is engaged in showing different
+Kansas towns how to soften their water supply; efforts are also being
+made to find some means of softening the fiber of the Yucca plant--a
+weed which the farmers of western Kansas have been trying to get rid
+of--so that it may be utilized for making rope. The Kansas state flower
+is also being put to use for the manufacture of sunflower oil, which, in
+Russia, is burned in lamps, and which Kansas already uses, to some
+extent, as a salad dressing and also as a substitute for linseed oil.
+
+The university has also given attention to the situation with regard to
+natural gas in Kansas, Professor Cady having recently appeared before
+the State Board of Utilities recommending that, as natural gas varies
+greatly as to heat units, the heat unit, rather than the measured foot,
+be made the basis for all charges by the gas companies.
+
+In one room I came upon a young man who was in charge of a machine for
+the manufacture of liquid air. This product is packed in vacuum cans and
+shipped to all parts of the world. I had never seen it before. It is
+strange stuff, having a temperature of 300 degrees below zero. The young
+man took a little of it in his hand (it looked like a small pill made of
+water), and, after holding it for an instant, threw it on the floor,
+where it evaporated instantly. He then took some in his mouth and blew
+it out in the form of a frosty smoke. He was an engaging young man, and
+seemed to enjoy immensely doing tricks with liquid air.
+
+In the department of entomology there is also great activity. Professor
+S. J. Hunter has, among other researches, been conducting for the last
+three years elaborate experiments designed to prove or disprove the
+Sambon theory with regard to pellagra.
+
+"Pellagra," Professor Hunter explained to me, "has been known in Italy
+since 1782, but has existed in the United States for less than thirty
+years, although it is now found in nearly half our States and has become
+most serious in the South. Its cause, character, and cure are unknown,
+although there are several theories. One theory is that it is caused by
+poisoning due to the excessive use of corn products; another attributes
+it to cottonseed products; and the Sambon theory, dating from 1910,
+attributes it to the sand fly, the theory being that the fly becomes
+infected through sucking the blood of a victim of pellagra, and then
+communicates the infection by biting other persons. In order to
+ascertain the truth or untruth of this contention, we have bred
+uncontaminated sand flies, and after having allowed them to bite
+infected persons, have let them bite monkeys. The result of these
+experiments is not yet complete. One monkey is, however, sick, at this
+time, and his symptoms are not unlike certain symptoms of pellagra."
+
+The university's Museum of Natural History contains the largest single
+panoramic display of stuffed animals in the world. This exhibition is
+contained in one enormous case running around an extensive room, and
+shows, in suitable landscape settings, American animals from Alaska to
+the tropics. The collection is valued at $300,000, and was made, almost
+entirely, by members of the faculty and students.
+
+The Department of Physical Education is in charge of Dr. James Naismith,
+who can teach a man to swim in thirty minutes, and who is famous as the
+inventor of the game of basketball. Dr. Naismith devised basketball as a
+winter substitute for football, and gave the game its name because,
+originally, he used peach baskets as his goals.
+
+A very complete system of university extension is operated, covering an
+enormous field, reaching schools, colleges, clubs, and individuals, and
+assisting them in almost all branches of education; also a Department of
+Correspondence Study, covering about 150 courses. Likewise, in the
+Department of Journalism a great amount of interesting and practical
+work is being done on the editorial, business, and mechanical sides of
+newspaper publishing. Following the general practice of other
+departments of the university, the Department of Journalism places its
+equipment and resources at the service of Kansas editors and publishers.
+A clearing house is maintained where buyers and sellers of newspaper
+properties may be brought together, printers are assisted in making
+estimates, cost-system blanks are supplied, and job type is cast and
+furnished free to Kansas publishers in exchange for their old worn-out
+type.
+
+These are but a few scattered examples of the inner and outer activities
+of the University of Kansas, as I noted them during the course of an
+afternoon and evening spent there. For me the visit was an education. I
+wish that all Americans might visit such a university. But more than
+that, I wish that some system might be devised for the exchange of
+students between great colleges in different parts of the country.
+Doubtless it would be a good thing for certain students at western
+colleges to learn something of the more elaborate life and the greater
+sophistication of the great colleges of the East, but more particularly
+I think that vast benefits might accrue to certain young men from
+Harvard, Yale, and similar institutions, by contact with such
+universities as that of Kansas. Unfortunately, however, the eastern
+students, who would be most benefited by such a shift, would be the very
+ones to oppose it. Above all others, I should like to see young eastern
+aristocrats, spenders, and disciples of false culture shipped out to the
+West. It would do them good, and I think they would be amazed to find
+out how much they liked it. However, this idea of an exchange is not
+based so much on the theory that it would help the individual student as
+on the theory that greater mutual comprehension is needed by Americans.
+We do not know our country or our fellow countrymen as we should. We are
+too localized. We do not understand the United States as Germans
+understand Germany, as the French understand France, or as the British
+understand Great Britain. This is partly because of the great distances
+which separate us, partly because of the heterogeneous nature of our
+population, and partly because, being a young civilization, we flock
+abroad in quest of the ancient charm and picturesqueness of Europe. The
+"See America First" idea, which originated as the advertising catch line
+of a western railroad, deserves serious consideration, not only because
+of what America has to offer in the way of scenery, but also because of
+what she has to offer in the way of people. I found that a great many
+thoughtful persons all over the United States were considering this
+point.
+
+In Detroit, for example, the Lincoln National Highway project is being
+vigorously pushed by the automobile manufacturers, and within a short
+time streams of motors will be crossing the continent. As a means of
+making Americans better acquainted with one another the automobile has
+already done good work, but its service in that direction has only
+begun.
+
+Mr. Charles C. Moore, president of the Panama-Pacific Exposition, whom I
+met, later, in San Francisco, told me that the authorities of the
+exposition had been particularly interested in the idea of promoting
+friendliness between Americans.
+
+"We Americans," said Mr. Moore, "are still wondering what America really
+is, and what Americans really are. One of the greatest benefits of a
+fair like ours is the opportunity it gives us to form friendly ties with
+people from all over the country. We shall have a great series of
+congresses, conferences, and conventions, and will provide the use of
+halls without charge. The railroads are cooperating with us by making
+low round-trip rates which enable the visitor to come one way and
+return by another route, so that, besides seeing the fair, they can see
+the country. The more Americans there are who become interested in
+seeing the country, the better it is for us and for the United States.
+Any one requiring proof of the absolute necessity of a closer mutual
+understanding between the people of this country has but to look at the
+condition which exists in national politics. What do the Atlantic Coast
+Congressmen and the Pacific Coast Congressmen really know of one
+another's requirements? Little or nothing as a rule. They reach
+conclusions very largely by exchanging votes: 'I'll vote for your measure
+if you'll vote for mine.' That system has cost this country millions
+upon millions. If I had my way, there would be a law making it necessary
+for each Congressman to visit every State in the Union once in two
+years."
+
+In an earlier chapter I mentioned Quantrell's gang of border ruffians,
+of which Frank and Jesse James were members, and referred to the
+Lawrence massacre conducted by the gang.
+
+In all the border trouble, from 1855-6 to the time of the Civil War,
+Lawrence figured as the antislavery center. That and the ill feeling
+engendered by differences of opinion along the Missouri border with
+regard to slavery, caused the massacre. It occurred on August 21, 1863.
+Lawrence had been expecting an attack by Quantrell for some time before
+that date, and had at one period posted guards on the roads leading to
+the eastward. After a time, however, this precaution was given up,
+enabling Quantrell to surprise the town and make a clean sweep. He
+arrived at Lawrence at 5.30 in the morning with about 450 men. Frank
+James told me that he himself was not present at the massacre, as he had
+been shot a short time before and temporarily disabled.
+
+Lawrence, which then had a population of about 1,200, was caught
+entirely unawares, and was absolutely at the mercy of the ruffians. A
+good many of the latter got drunk, which added to the horror, for these
+men were bad enough when sober. They burned down almost the entire
+business section of the town, as well as a great many houses, and going
+into the homes, dragged out 163 men, unarmed and defenseless, and
+cold-bloodedly slaughtered them in the streets, before the eyes of their
+wives and children. Very few men who were in the town at the time,
+escaped, but among the survivors were twenty-five men who were in the
+Free State Hotel, the proprietor of which had once befriended Quantrell,
+and was for that reason spared together with his guests. Some forty or
+fifty persons living in Lawrence at the present time remember the
+massacre, most of these being women who saw their husbands, fathers,
+brothers, or sons killed in the midst of the general orgy. Many stories
+of narrow escapes are preserved. In one instance a woman whose house had
+been set on fire, wrapped her husband in a rug, and dragged him, thus
+enveloped, in the yard as though attempting to save her rug from the
+conflagration. There he remained until, on news that soldiers were on
+the way to the relief of the stricken town, the Quantrell gang
+withdrew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+MONOTONY
+
+
+We left Lawrence late at night and went immediately to bed upon the
+train. When I awoke in the morning the car was standing still. In the
+ventilators overhead, I heard the steady monotonous whistling of the
+wind. As I became more awake I began to wonder where we were and why we
+were not moving. Presently I raised the window shade and looked out.
+
+How many things there are in life which we think we know from hearsay,
+yet which, when we actually encounter them, burst upon us with a new and
+strange significance! I had believed, for example, that I realized the
+vastness of the United States without having actually traveled across
+the country, yet I had not realized it at all, and I do not believe that
+any one can possibly realize it without having felt it, in the course of
+a long journey. So too, with the interminable rolling desolation of the
+prairies, and the likeness of the prairies to the sea: I had imagined
+that I understood the prairies without having laid eyes upon them, but
+when I raised my window shade that morning, and found the prairies
+stretching out before me, I was as surprised, as stunned, as though I
+had never heard of them before, and the idea came to me like an original
+thought: How perfectly _enormous_ they are! And how like the sea!
+
+I had discovered for myself the truth of another platitude.
+
+For a long time I lay comfortably in my berth, gazing out at the
+appalling spread of land and sky. Even at sea the great bowl of the sky
+had never looked so vast to me. The land was nothing to it. In the
+foreground there was nothing; in the middle distance, nothing; in the
+distance, nothing--nothing, nothing, nothing, met the eye in all that
+treeless waste of brown and gray which lay between the railroad line and
+the horizon, on which was discernible the faint outlines of several
+ships--ships which were in reality a house, a windmill and a barn.
+
+Presently our craft--for I had the feeling that I was on a ship at
+anchor--got under way. On we sailed over the ocean of land for mile upon
+mile, each mile like the one before it and the one that followed, save
+only when we passed a little fleet of houses, like fishing boats at sea,
+or crossed an inconsequential wagon road, resembling the faintly
+discernible wake of some ship, long since out of sight.
+
+Presently I arose and joining my companion, went to the dining car for
+breakfast. He too had fallen under the spell of the prairies. We sat
+over our meal and stared out of the window like a pair of images. After
+breakfast it was the same: we returned to our car and continued to gaze
+out at the eternal spaces. Later in the morning, we became restless and
+moved back to the observation car as men are driven by boredom from one
+room to another on an ocean liner.
+
+Now and then in the distance we would see cattle like dots upon the
+plain, and once in a long time a horseman ambling along beneath the sky.
+The little towns were far apart and had, like the surrounding scenery,
+an air of sadness and of desolation. The few buildings were of primitive
+form, most of them one-story structures of wood, painted in raw color.
+But each little settlement had its wooden church, and each church its
+steeple--a steeple crude and pathetic in its expression of effort on the
+part of a poor little hamlet to embellish, more than any other house,
+the house of God.
+
+Even our train seemed to have been affected by this country. The
+observation car was deserted when we reached it. Presently, however, a
+stranger joined us there, and after a time we fell into conversation
+with him as we sat and looked at the receding track.
+
+He proved to be a Kansan and he told us interesting things about the
+State.
+
+Aside from wheat, which is the great Kansas crop, corn is grown in
+eastern Kansas, and alfalfa in various parts of the State. Alfalfa stays
+green throughout the greater part of the year as it goes through several
+sowings. Fields of alfalfa resemble clover fields, save that the former
+grows more densely and is of a richer, darker shade of green. After
+alfalfa has grown a few years the roots run far down into the ground,
+often reaching the "underflow" of western Kansas. This underflow is very
+characteristic of that part of the State, where it is said, there are
+many lost rivers flowing beneath the surface, adding one more to the
+list of Kansas phenomena. Some of these rivers flow only three or four
+feet below the ground, I am told, while others have reached a depth of
+from twenty to a hundred feet. Alfalfa roots will go down twenty feet to
+find the water. The former bed of the Republican River in northwestern
+Kansas is, with the exception of a narrow strip in the middle where the
+river runs on the surface in flood times, covered with rich alfalfa
+fields. Excepting at the time of spring and summer rains, this river is
+almost dry. The old bridges over it are no longer necessary except when
+the rains occur, and the river has piled sand under them until in some
+places there is not room for a man to stand beneath bridges which, when
+built, were ten and twelve feet above the river bed. Now, I am told,
+they don't build bridges any more, but lay cement roads through the
+sand, clearing their surfaces after the freshets.
+
+The Arkansas River once a mighty stream, has held out with more success
+than the Republican against the winds and drifting sands, but it is
+slowly and certainly disappearing, burying itself in the sand and earth
+it carries down at flood times--a work in which it is assisted by the
+strong, persistent prairie winds.
+
+[Illustration: Even at sea the great bowl of the sky had never looked
+to me so vast]
+
+The great wheat belt begins somewhere about the middle of the State and
+continues to the west. In the spring the wheat is light green in color
+and is flexible in the wind so that at that time of year, the
+resemblance of the prairies to the sea is much more marked, and
+travelers are often heard to declare that the sight of the green billows
+makes them seasick. The season in Kansas is about a month earlier than
+in the eastern states; in May and June the wheat turns yellow, and in
+the latter part of June it is harvested, leaving the prairies brown and
+bare again.
+
+The prairie land which is not sown in wheat or alfalfa, is covered with
+prairie grass--a long, wiry grass, lighter in shade than blue grass,
+which waves in the everlasting wind and glistens like silver in the sun.
+
+Rain, sun, wind! The elements rule over Kansas. People's hearts are
+light or heavy according to the weather and the prospects as to crops.
+My Kansan friend in the observation car pointed out to me the fact that
+at every railroad siding the railroad company had paid its respects to
+the Kansas wind by the installation of a device known as a "derailer,"
+the purpose of which is to prevent cars from rolling or blowing from a
+siding out onto the main line. If a car starts to blow along the siding,
+the derailer catches it before it reaches the switch, and throws one
+truck off the track.
+
+"I suppose you've seen cyclones out here, too?" I asked the Kansan.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said.
+
+"Do the people out in this section of the State all have cyclone
+cellars?"
+
+"Oh, some," he said. "Some has 'em. But a great many folks don't pay no
+attention to cyclones."
+
+Last year, during a bad drought in western Kansas, the wind performed a
+new feat, adding another item to Kansas tradition. A high wind came in
+February and continued until June, actually blowing away a large portion
+of the top-soil of Thomas County, denuding a tract of land fifteen by
+twenty miles in extent. It was not a mere surface blow, either. In many
+places two feet of soil would be carried away; roads were obliterated,
+houses stood like dreary, deserted little forts, the earth piled up
+breast high around their wire-enclosed dooryards, and fences fell
+because the supporting soil was blown away from the posts. During this
+time the air was full of dust, and after it was over the country had
+reverted to desert--a desert not of sand, but of dust.
+
+This story sounded so improbable that I looked up a man who had been in
+Thomas County at the time. He told me about it in detail.
+
+"I have spent most of my life in the Middle West," he said, "but that
+exhibition was a revelation to me of the power of the wind. A quarter of
+the county was stripped bare. The farmers had, for the most part, moved
+out of the district because they couldn't keep the wheat in the ground
+long enough to raise a crop. But they were camped around the edges,
+making common cause against the wind. You couldn't find a man among
+them, either, who would admit that he was beaten. The kind of men who
+are beaten by things like that couldn't stand the racket in western
+Kansas. The fellows out there are the most outrageously optimistic folks
+I ever saw. They will stand in the wind, eating the dirt that blows into
+their mouths, and telling you what good soil it is--they don't mean good
+to eat, either--and if you give them a kind word they are up in arms in
+a minute trying to sell you some of the cursed country.
+
+"The men I talked to attributed the trouble to too much harrowing; they
+said the surface soil was scratched so fine that it simply wouldn't
+hold. There were wild theories, too, of meteorological disturbances, but
+I think those were mostly evolved in the brains of Sunday editors.
+
+"The farmers fought the thing systematically by a process they called
+'listing': a turning over of the top-soil with plows. And after a while
+the listing, for some reason known only to the Almighty and the
+Department of Agriculture, actually did stop the trouble and the land
+stayed put again. Then the farmers planted Kaffir corn because it grows
+easily, and because they needed a network of roots to hold down the
+soil. Most of that land was reclaimed by the end of last summer."
+
+The little towns along the line are almost all alike. Each has a
+watering tank for locomotives, a grain elevator, and a cattle pen,
+beside the track. Each has a station made of wide vertical boards, their
+seams covered by wooden strips, and the whole painted ochre. Then there
+is usually a wide, sandy main street with a few brick buildings and
+more wooden ones, while on the outskirts of the town are shanties,
+covered with tar paper, and beyond them the eternal prairie. You can see
+no more reason why a town should be at that point on the prairie than at
+any other point. And it is a fact, I believe, that, in many instances,
+the railroad companies have simply created towns, arbitrarily, at even
+distances. The only town I recall that looked in any way different from
+every other town out there, was Wallace, where a storekeeper has made a
+lot of curious figures, in twisted wire, and placed them on the roof of
+his store, whence they project into the air for a distance of twenty or
+thirty feet.
+
+I think, though I am not sure, that it was before we crossed the
+Colorado line when we saw our first 'dobe house, our first sage brush,
+and our first tumbleweed. Mark Twain has described sagebrush as looking
+like "a gnarled and venerable live oak tree reduced to a little shrub
+two feet high, with its rough bark, its foliage, its twisted boughs, all
+complete." In "Roughing It" he writes two whole pages about sagebrush,
+telling how it gives a gray-green tint to the desert country, how hardy
+it is, and how it is used for making camp fires on the plains and he
+winds up with this characteristic paragraph:
+
+"Sagebrush is very fair fuel, but as a vegetable it is a distinguished
+failure. Nothing can abide the taste of it but the jackass and his
+illegitimate child, the mule. But their testimony to its nutritiousness
+is worth nothing, for they will eat pine knots, or anthracite coal, or
+brass filings, or lead pipe, or old bottles, or anything that comes
+handy, and then go off looking as grateful as if they had had oysters
+for dinner."
+
+[Illustration: The little towns of Western Kansas are far apart and
+have, like the surrounding scenery, an air of sadness and desolation]
+
+Though Mark Twain tells about coyotes and prairie dogs--animals which I
+looked for, but regret to say I did not see--he ignores the tumbleweed,
+the most curious thing, animal, vegetable, or mineral, that crossed my
+vision as I crossed the plains. I cannot understand why Mark Twain did
+not mention this weed, because he must have seen it, and it must have
+delighted him, with its comical gyrations.
+
+Tumbleweed is a bushy plant which grows to a height of perhaps three
+feet, and has a mass of little twigs and branches which make its shape
+almost perfectly round. Fortunately for the amusement of mankind, it has
+a weak stalk, so that, when the plant dries, the wind breaks it off at
+the bottom, and then proceeds to roll it, over and over, across the
+land. I well remember the first tumbleweed we saw.
+
+"What on earth is that thing?" cried my companion, suddenly, pointing
+out through the car window. I looked. Some distance away a strange,
+buff-colored shape was making a swift, uncanny progress toward the east.
+It wasn't crawling; it wasn't running; but it was traveling fast, with a
+rolling, tossing, careening motion, like a barrel half full of whisky,
+rushing down hill. Now it tilted one way, now another; now it shot
+swiftly into some slight depression in the plain, but only to come
+bounding lightly out again, with an air indescribably gay, abandoned and
+inane.
+
+Soon we saw another and another; they became more and more common as we
+went along until presently they were rushing everywhere, careering in
+their maudlin course across the prairie, and piled high against the
+fences along the railroad's right of way, like great concealing
+snowdrifts.
+
+We fell in love with tumbleweed and never while it was in sight lost
+interest in its idiotic evolutions. Excepting only tobacco, it is the
+greatest weed that grows, and it has the advantage over tobacco that it
+does no man any harm, but serves only to excite his risibilities. It is
+the clown of vegetation, and it has the air, as it rolls along, of being
+conscious of its comicality, like the smart _caniche_, in the dog show,
+who goes and overturns the basket behind the trainer's back; or the
+circus clown who runs about with a rolling gait, tripping, turning
+double and triple somersaults, rising, running on, tripping, falling,
+and turning over and over again. Who shall say that tumbleweed is
+useless, since it contributes a rare note of drollery to the tragic
+desolation of the western plains?
+
+As I have said, I am not certain that we saw the tumbleweed before we
+crossed the line from Kansas into Colorado, but there is one episode
+that I remember, and which I am certain occurred before we reached the
+boundary, for I recall the name of the town at which it happened.
+
+It was a sad-looking little town, like all the rest--just a main street
+and a few stores and houses set down in the midst of the illimitable
+waste. Our train stopped there.
+
+I saw a man across the aisle look out of the window, scowl, rise from
+his seat, throw up his arms, and exclaim, addressing no one in
+particular: "God! How can they stand living out here? I'd rather be
+dead!"
+
+My companion and I had been speaking of the same thing, wondering how
+people could endure their lives in such a place.
+
+"Come on," he said, rising. "This is the last stop before we get to
+Colorado. Let's get out and walk."
+
+I followed him from the car and to the station platform.
+
+Looking away from the station, we gazed upon a foreground the principal
+scenic grandeur of which was supplied by a hitching post. Beyond lay the
+inevitable main street and dismal buildings. One of them, as I recall
+it, was painted sky-blue, and bore the simple, unostentatious word,
+"Hotel."
+
+My companion gazed upon the scene for a time. He looked melancholy.
+Finally, without turning his head, he spoke.
+
+"How would you like to get off and spend a week here, some day?" he
+asked me.
+
+"You mean get off some day and spend a week," I corrected.
+
+"No, I mean get off and spend a week some day."
+
+I was still cogitating over that when the train started. We scrambled
+aboard and, resuming our seats in the observation car, looked back at
+the receding station. There, in strong black letters on a white sign, we
+saw, for the first time, the name of the town:
+
+Monotony!
+
+
+
+
+THE MOUNTAINS AND THE COAST
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+UNDER PIKE'S PEAK
+
+
+What a curious thing it is, that mental process by which a first
+impression of a city is summed up. A railway station, a taxicab, swift
+glimpses through a dirty window of streets, buildings, people, blurred
+together, incoherently, like moving pictures out of focus; then a quick
+unconscious adding of infinitesimal details and the total: "I like this
+city," or: "I do not like it."
+
+It was late afternoon when the train upon which we had come from eastern
+Kansas stopped at the Denver station--a substantial if not distinguished
+structure, neither new nor very old, but of that architectural period in
+which it was considered that a roof was hardly more essential to a
+station than a tower.
+
+Passing through the building and emerging upon the taxi stand, we found
+ourselves confronted by an elaborate triple gateway of bronze, somewhat
+reminiscent of certain city gates of Paris, at which the _octroi_ waits
+with the inhospitable purpose of collecting taxes. However, Denver has
+no _octroi_, nor is the Denver gate a barrier. Indeed, it is not even a
+gate, having no doors, but is intended merely as a sort of formal portal
+to the city--a city proud of its climate, of the mountain scenery, and
+of its reputation for thoroughgoing hospitality. Over the large central
+arch of this bronze monstrosity the beribboned delegate (arriving to
+attend one of the many conventions always being held in Denver) may
+read, in large letters, the word "Welcome"; and when, later, departing,
+he approaches the arch from the city gate, he finds Denver giving him
+godspeed with the word "Mizpah."
+
+Passing beneath the central arch, our taxi swept along a wide, straight
+street, paved with impeccably smooth asphalt, and walled in with
+buildings tall enough and solid enough to do credit to the business and
+shopping district of any large American city.
+
+All this surprised me. Perhaps because of the unfavorable first
+impression I had received in Kansas City, I had expected Denver, being
+farther west, to have a less finished look. Furthermore, I had been
+reading Richard Harding Davis's book, "The West Through a Car Window,"
+which, though it told me that Denver is "a smaller New York in an
+encircling range of white-capped mountains," added that Denver has "the
+worst streets in the country." Denver is still by way of being a
+miniature New York, with its considerable number of eastern families,
+and its little replica of Broadway cafe life, as well; but the Denver
+streets are no longer ill paved. Upon the contrary, they are among the
+best paved streets possessed by any city I have visited. That caused me
+to look at the copyright notice in Mr. Davis's book, whereupon I
+discovered, to my surprise, that twenty-two years (and Heaven only
+knows how many steam rollers) had passed over Denver since the book was
+written. Yet, barring such improvements, the picture is quite accurate
+to-day.
+
+[Illustration: In the lobby of the Brown Palace Hotel my companion and I
+saw several old fellows, sitting about, looking neither prosperous nor
+busy, but always talking mines. A kind word, or even a pleasant glance,
+is enough to set them off.]
+
+Another feeling of my first ten minutes in Denver was one of wonder at
+the city's flatness. That part of it through which we passed on the way
+to the Brown Palace Hotel was as flat as Chicago, whereas I had always
+thought of Denver as being in the mountains. However, if flat, the
+streets looked attractive, and I arrived at the proudly named
+caravansary with the feeling that Denver was a fine young city.
+
+Meeting cities, one after another, as I met them on this journey, is
+like being introduced, at a reception, to a line of strangers. A glance,
+a handshake, a word or two, and you have formed an impression of an
+individuality. But there is this difference: the individual at the
+reception is "fixed up" for the occasion, whereas the city has but one
+exterior to show to every one.
+
+That the exterior shown by Denver is pleasing has been, until recently,
+a matter more or less of accident. The city was laid out by pioneers and
+mining men, who showed their love of liberality in making the streets
+wide. There is nothing close about Denver. She has the open-handed, easy
+affluence of a mining city. She spends money freely on good pavements
+and good buildings. Thus, without any brilliant comprehensive plan she
+has yet grown from a rough mining camp into a delightful city, all in
+the space of fifty years.
+
+A little more than a hundred years ago Captain Zebulon Pike crossed the
+plains and visited the territory which is now Colorado, though it was
+then a part of the vast country of Louisiana. Long, Fremont, Kit Carson,
+and the other early pioneers followed, but it was not until 1858 that
+gold was found on the banks of Cherry Creek, above its juncture with the
+South Platte River, causing a camp to be located on the present site of
+Denver. The first camp was on the west side of Cherry Creek and was
+named Auraria, after a town in Georgia. On the east side there developed
+another camp, St. Charles by name, and these two camps remained, for
+some time, independent of each other. The discovery of gold in
+California brought a new influx of men to Colorado--though the part of
+Colorado in which Denver stands was then in the territory of Kansas,
+which extended to the Rockies. Many of the pioneers were men from
+eastern Kansas, and hence it happened that when the mining camps of
+Auraria and St. Charles were combined into one town, the town was named
+for General James W. Denver, then Governor of Kansas.
+
+Kansas City and Denver are about of an age and are comparable in many
+ways. The former still remains a kind of capital to which naturally
+gravitate men who have made fortunes in southwestern oil and cattle,
+while the latter is a mining capital. Of her "hundred millionaires,"
+most have been enriched by mines, and the story of her sudden fortunes
+and of her famous "characters" makes a long and racy chapter in
+American history, running the gamut from tragedy to farce. And, like
+Kansas City, Denver is particularly American. Practically all her
+millionaires, past and present, came of native stock, and almost all her
+wealth has been taken from ground in the State of Colorado.
+
+J. M. Oskison, in his "Unconventional Portrait," published in
+"Collier's" a year or so ago, told a great deal about Denver in a few
+words:
+
+     Last October a frock-coated clergyman of the Episcopal Church stood
+     up in one of the luxurious parlors of Denver's newest hotel and
+     said: "I am an Arapahoe Indian; when I was a little boy my people
+     used to hunt buffalo all over this country; we made our camps right
+     on this place where Denver is now." There is not very much gray in
+     that man's hair.
+
+     In the summer of 1867, when Vice-President Colfax came to Denver
+     from Cheyenne, after a stage ride of twenty-two hours, he found it
+     a hopeful city of 5,000. Denver had just learned that Cherry Creek
+     sometimes carried a great deal of water down to the Platte River,
+     and that it wasn't wise to build in its bed.
+
+     Irrigation has made a garden of the city and lands about. There are
+     240,000 people who make Denver their home to-day. The city under
+     the shadow of the mountains is spread over an area of sixty square
+     miles; a plat of redeemed desert with an assessed valuation of
+     $135,000,000.
+
+In 1870, three years after the visit of Colfax, Denver got its first
+railroad: a spur line from Cheyenne; in the 80's it got street cars;
+to-day it has the look of a city that is made--and well made. But, as I
+have said before, that has, hitherto, been largely a matter of good
+fortune. Denver's youth has saved her from the municipal disease which
+threatens such older cities as St. Louis and St. Paul: hardening of the
+arteries of traffic. Also, nature has given her what may be termed a
+good "municipal complexion," wherein she has been more fortunate than
+Kansas City, whose warts and wens have necessitated expensive operations
+by the city "beauty doctor."
+
+Now, a city with the natural charm of Denver is, like a woman similarly
+endowed, in danger of becoming oversure. Either is likely to lie back
+and rest upon Nature's bounty. Yet, to Denver's eternal credit be it
+said, she has not fallen into the ways of indolent self-satisfaction.
+Indeed, I know of no American city which has done, and is doing, more
+for herself. Consider these few random items taken from the credit side
+of her balance: She is one of the best lighted cities in the land. She
+has the commission form of government. (Also, as you will remember, she
+has woman suffrage, Colorado having been the first State to accept it.)
+Her Children's Court, presided over by Judge Ben B. Lindsey, is famous.
+She has no bread line, and, as for crime, when I asked Police Inspector
+Leonard De Lue about it, he shook his head and said: "No; business is
+light. The fact is we ain't got no crime out here." Denver owns her own
+Auditorium, where free concerts are given by the city. Also, in one of
+her parks, she has a city race track, where sport is the only
+consideration, betting, even between horse owners, having been
+successfully eliminated. Furthermore, Denver has been one of the first
+American cities to begin work on a "civic center." Several blocks before
+the State Capitol have been cleared of buildings, and a plaza is being
+laid out there which will presently be a Tuileries Garden, in miniature,
+surrounded by fine public buildings, forming a suitable central feature
+for the admirable system of parks and boulevards which already exists.
+
+Curiously enough, however, by far the smallest part of Denver's parks
+are within the confines of the city. About five years ago Mr. John
+Brisben Walker proposed that mountain parks be created. Denver seized
+upon the idea with characteristic energy, with the result that she now
+has mountain parks covering forty square miles in neighboring counties.
+These parks have an area almost as great as that of the whole city, and
+are connected with the Denver boulevards by fine roads, so that some of
+the most spectacular motor trips in the country are within easy range of
+the "Queen City of the Plains."
+
+But though the mountains give Denver her individuality, and though she
+has made the most of them, they have not proved an unmixed blessing. The
+riches which she has extracted from them, and the splendid setting that
+they give her, is the silver lining to her commercial cloud. The
+mountains directly west of Denver form a barrier which has forced the
+main lines of trancontinental travel to the north and south, leaving
+Denver in a backwater.
+
+To overcome this handicap the late David Moffat, one of Denver's early
+millionaires, started in to build the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad,
+better known as the Moffat Road. This railway strikes almost due west
+from Denver and crosses the continental divide at an altitude of over
+two miles. While it is one of the most astonishing pieces of railroad in
+the world, its windings and severe grades have made operation difficult
+and expensive, and the road has been built only as far as Craig, Colo.,
+less than halfway to Salt Lake City. The great difficulty has always
+been the crossing of the divide. The city of Denver has now come forward
+with the Moffat tunnel project, and has extended her credit to the
+extent of three million dollars, for the purpose of helping the railroad
+company to build the tunnel. It will be more than six miles long, and
+will penetrate the Continental Divide at a point almost half a mile
+below that now reached by the road, saving twenty-four miles in distance
+and over two per cent. in grade. The tunnel is now under construction,
+and will, when completed, be the longest railroad tunnel in the Western
+Hemisphere. The railroad company stands one-third of the cost, while the
+city of Denver undertakes two-thirds. When completed, this route will be
+the shortest between Denver and Salt Lake by many miles.
+
+Nor is Denver giving her entire attention to her railway line. The
+good-roads movement is strong throughout the State of Colorado. Last
+year two million dollars was expended under the direction of the State
+Highway Commission--a very large sum when it is considered that the
+total population of the State is not a great deal larger than that of
+the city of St. Louis.
+
+The construction of roads in Colorado is carried on under a most
+advanced system. Of a thousand convicts assigned to the State
+Penitentiary at Canyon City, four hundred are employed upon road work. In
+traveling through the State I came upon several parties of these men,
+and had I not been informed of the fact, I should never have known that
+they were convicts. I met them in the mountains, where they live in
+camps many miles distant from the penitentiary. They seemed always to be
+working with a will, but as we passed, they would look up and smile and
+wave their hands to us. They appeared healthy, happy, and--respectable.
+They do not wear stripes, and their guards are unarmed, being selected,
+rather, as foremen with a knowledge of road building. When one considers
+the ghastly mine wars which have, at intervals, disgraced the State, it
+is comforting to reflect upon Colorado's enlightened methods of handling
+her prisons and her prisoners.
+
+Denver, in her general architecture, is more attractive than certain
+important cities to the eastward of her. Her houses are, for the most
+part, built solidly of brick and stone, and more taste has been
+displayed in them, upon the whole, than has been shown in either St.
+Louis or Kansas City. Like Kansas City, Denver has many long,
+tree-bordered streets lined with modest homes which look new and which
+are substantially built, but there is less monotony of design in
+Denver.
+
+As in Kansas City, the wonder of Denver is that it has all happened in
+such a short time. This was brought home to me when, dining in a
+delightful house one evening, I was informed by my hostess that the land
+on which is her home was "homesteaded," in '64 or '65, by her father;
+that is to say, he had taken it over, gratis, from the Government. That
+modest corner lot is now worth between fifteen and twenty thousand
+dollars.
+
+Though Denver has no art gallery, she hopes to have one in connection
+with her new "civic center." In the meantime, some paintings are shown
+in the Public Library and in the Colorado Museum of Natural History--a
+building which also shelters a collection of stuffed animals (somewhat
+better, on the whole, than the paintings) and of minerals found in the
+State.
+
+A symphony hall is planned along with the new art gallery, for Denver
+has a real interest in music. Indeed, I found that true of many cities
+in the Middle West and West. In Kansas City, for instance, important
+concerts are patronized not only by residents of the place, but by
+quantities of people who come in from other cities and towns within a
+radius of thirty or forty miles.
+
+Denver has her own symphony orchestra, one which compares favorably with
+many other large orchestras in various parts of the country. The Denver
+organization is led by Horace Tureman, a very capable conductor, and its
+seventy musicians have been gathered from theater and cafe orchestras
+throughout the city. Six or eight programs of the highest character are
+given each season, and in order that all music lovers may be enabled to
+attend the concerts, seats are sold as low as ten cents each.
+
+"If some of the big concert singers who come out here could hear one of
+our symphony programs," one Denver woman said to me, "I think they might
+revise their opinion of us. A great many of them must think us less
+advanced, musically, than we are, for they insist on singing 'The
+Suwanee River' and 'Home, Sweet Home'--which we always resent."
+
+The one conspicuous example of sculpture which I saw in Denver--the
+Pioneer's Fountain, by Macmonnies--is not entirely Denver's fault. When
+a city gives an order to a sculptor of Macmonnies's standing, she shows
+that she means to do the best she can. It is then up to the sculptor.
+
+The Pioneer's Fountain, which is intended to commemorate the early
+settlers, could hardly be less suitable. It is large and exceedingly
+ornate. Surmounting the top of it is a rococo cowboy upon a pony of the
+same extraction. The pony is not a cow-pony, and the cowboy is not a
+cowboy, but a theatrical figure: something which might have been modeled
+by a Frenchman whose acquaintance with this country had been limited to
+the reading of bad translations of Fenimore Cooper and Bret Harte. At
+the base of the fountain are figures which, I was informed, represent
+pioneers. If western pioneers had been like these, there never would
+have been a West. They are soft creatures, almost voluptuous, who would
+have wept in face of hostile Indians. The whole fountain seems like
+something intended for a mantel ornament in Dresden china, but which,
+through some confusion, had gotten itself enlarged and cast in bronze.
+
+Society in Denver has several odd features. For one thing, it is the
+habit of fashionables, and those who wish to gaze upon them, to attend
+the theaters on certain nights, which are known as "society night."
+Thus, the Broadway Theater has "society night" on Mondays, the Denham on
+Wednesdays, and the Orpheum on Fridays.
+
+"Society," of course, means different things to different persons. In
+Denver the word, used in its most restricted, most elegant, most
+_recherche_, and most exclusive sense, means that group of persons who
+are celebrated in the society columns of the Denver newspapers, as "The
+Sacred Thirty-six."
+
+If it is possible for newspapers anywhere to outdo in idiocy those of
+New York in the handling of "society news," I should say that the Denver
+newspapers accomplished it. Having less to work with, they have to make
+more noise in proportion. Thus the arrival in Denver, at about the time
+I was there, of Lord and Lady Decies caused an amount of agitation the
+like of which I have never witnessed anywhere. The Denver papers were
+absolutely plastered over with the pictures and doings and sayings of
+this English gentleman and his American wife, and the matter published
+with regard to them revealed a delight in their presence which was
+childlike and engaging.
+
+I have a copy of one Denver paper, containing an interview with Lord and
+Lady Decies, in which the reporter mentions having been greeted "like I
+was a regular caller," adding: "The more I looked the grander everything
+got." The same reporter referred to Decies as "the Lord," which must
+have struck him as more flattering than when, later, he was mentioned as
+"His Nibs." The interviewer, however, finally approved the visitors,
+stating definitely that "they are Regular Folks and they don't
+four-flush about anything."
+
+When it comes to publicity there is one man in Denver who gets more of
+it than all the "Sacred Thirty-six" put together, adepts though they
+seem to be.
+
+It is impossible to consider Denver without considering Judge B.
+Lindsey--although I may say in passing that I was urged to perform the
+impossible in this respect.
+
+Opinion with regard to Judge Lindsey is divided in Denver. It is
+passionately divided. I talked not only with the Judge himself, but with
+a great many citizens of various classes, and while I encountered no one
+who did not believe in the celebrated Juvenile Court conducted by him, I
+found many who disapproved more or less violently of certain of his
+political activities, his speech-making tours, and, most of all, of his
+writings in the magazines which, it was contended, had given Denver a
+black eye.
+
+Denver is clearly sensitive about her reputation. As a passing observer,
+I am not surprised. With Denver, I believe that she has had to take more
+than a fair share of criticism. She thoroughly is sick of it, and one
+way in which she shows that she is sick of it is by a billboard
+campaign.
+
+"Denver has no bread line," I read on the bill-boards. "Stop knocking.
+Boost for more business and a bigger city."
+
+The charge that the Judge had injured Denver by "knocking" it in his
+book was used against him freely in the 1912 and 1914 campaign, but he
+was elected by a majority of more than two to one. He is always elected.
+He has run for his judgeship ten times in the past twelve years--this
+owing to certain disputes as to whether the judgeship of the Juvenile
+Court is a city, county, or state office. But whatever kind of office it
+is, he holds it firmly, having been elected by all three.
+
+At present the Judge is engaged in trying to complete a code of laws for
+the protection of women and children, which he hopes will be a model for
+all other States. This code will cover labor, juvenile delinquency, and
+dependency, juvenile courts, mothers' compensation, social insurance
+(the Judge's term for a measure guaranteeing every woman the support of
+her child, whether she be married or unmarried), probation, and other
+matters having to do with social and industrial justice toward mother
+and child. It is the Judge's general purpose to humanize the law, to
+cause temptations and frailties to be considered by the law, and to make
+society responsible for its part in crime.
+
+The Judge is also trying to get himself appointed a Commissioner of
+Child Welfare for the State, without salary or other expense.
+
+Of all these activities Denver, so far as I could learn, seemed
+generally to approve. A number of women, two corporation presidents, a
+hotel waiter, and a clerk in an express office, among others, told me
+they approved of Lindsey's work for women and children. A barber in the
+hotel said that he "guessed the Judge was all right," but added that
+there had been "too much hollering about reform," considering that
+Denver was a city depending for a good deal of her prosperity upon
+tourists.
+
+In the more intelligent circles the great objections to the Judge seemed
+to rest upon the florid methods he has used to promote his causes, upon
+the diversity of his interests, and upon the allegation that he had
+become a demagogue.
+
+One gentleman described him to me as "the most hated citizen of Colorado
+in Colorado, and the most admired citizen of Colorado everywhere outside
+the State."
+
+"Lindsey has done the State harm, perhaps," said this gentleman, "by
+what he has said about it, but he has done us a lot of good with his
+reforms. The great trouble is that he has too many irons in the fire.
+His court is a splendid thing; we all admit that. And he is peculiarly
+suited to his work. But he has gotten into all kinds of movements and
+has been so widely advertised that he has become a monumental egotist.
+He believes in his various causes, but, more than anything else, he
+believes in himself, in getting himself before the public and keeping
+himself there. He has posed as a little god, and, as Shaw says: 'If you
+pose as a little god, you must pose for better or for worse.'"
+
+The Judge is a very small, slight man, with a high, bulging white
+forehead, thin hair, a sharp, aquiline nose, a large, rolling black
+mustache and very fine eyes, brown almost to blackness. The most
+striking things about him are the eyes, the forehead, and the waxy
+whiteness of his skin. He looks thin-skinned, but he seems to have
+proved that, in the metaphorical sense at least, he is not.
+
+He speaks of his causes quietly but very earnestly, and you feel, as you
+listen to him, that he hardly ever thinks of other things. There is
+something strange and very individual about him.
+
+"The story of one American city," he said to me, "is the story of every
+American city. Denver is no worse than the rest. Indeed, I believe it is
+a cleaner and better city than most, and I have been in every city in
+every State in this Union."
+
+It has been said that "the worst thing about reform is the reformer."
+You can say the same thing about authorship and authors, or about
+plumbing and plumbers. It is only another way of saying that the human
+element is the weak element. I have met a number of reformers and have
+come to classify them under three general heads. Without considering the
+branch of reform in which they are interested, but only their
+characteristics as individuals, I should say that all professional
+reformers might be divided as follows: First, zealots, or "inspired"
+reformers; second, cold-blooded, theoretical, statistical reformers;
+third, a small number of normal human beings, capable alike of feeling
+and of reasoning clearly.
+
+About reformers of the first type there is often something abnormal.
+They are frequently of the most radical opinions, and are likely to be
+impatient, intolerant, and suspicious of the integrity of those who do
+not agree with them. They take to the platform like ducks to water and
+their egos are likely to be very highly developed. Reformers of the
+second type are repulsive, because reform, with them, has become
+mechanical; they measure suffering and sin with decimals, and regard
+their fellow men as specimens. What the reformer of the third class will
+do is more difficult to say. It is possible that, blowing neither hot
+nor cold, he will not accomplish so much as the others, but he can reach
+groups of persons who consider reformers of the first class unbalanced
+and those of the second inhuman.
+
+I have a friend who is a reformer of the third class. His temperate
+writings, surcharged with sanity and a sense of justice, have reached
+many persons who could hardly be affected by "yellow" methods of
+reform. Becoming deeply interested in his work, he was finally tempted
+to take the platform. One day, when he had come back from a lecture
+tour, I chanced to meet him, and was surprised to hear from him that,
+though he had been successful as a lecturer, he nevertheless intended to
+abandon that field of work.
+
+I asked him why.
+
+"I'll tell you," he said. "At first it was all right. I had certain
+things I wanted to say to people, and I said them. But as I went on, I
+began to feel my audiences more and more. I began to know how certain
+things I said would affect them. I began to want to affect them--to play
+upon them, see them stirred, hear them applaud. So, hardly realizing it
+at first, I began shifting my speeches, playing up certain points, not
+so much because those points were the ones which ought to be played up,
+but because of the pleasure it gave me to work up my listeners. Then,
+one night while I was talking, I realized what was happening to me. I
+was losing my intellectual honesty. Public speaking had been stealing it
+from me without my knowing it. Then and there I made up my mind to give
+it up. I'm not going to Say it any more; I'm going to Write it. When a
+man is writing, other minds are not acting upon his, as they are when he
+is speaking to an audience."
+
+Personally, I think Judge Lindsey would be stronger with the more
+critical minds of Colorado if he, too, had felt this way.
+
+A number of odd items about Denver should be mentioned.
+
+Elitch's Garden, the city's great summer amusement place, is famous all
+through the country. It was originally a farm, and still has a fine
+orchard, besides its orderly Coney Island features. Children go there in
+the afternoons with their nurses, and all of Denver goes there in the
+evenings when the great attraction is the theater with its stock company
+which is of a very high order.
+
+The Tabor Opera House in Denver is famous among theatrical people
+largely because of the man who built it. Tabor was one of Denver's most
+extraordinary mining millionaires. After he had struck it rich he
+determined to build as a monument to himself, the finest Opera House in
+the United States, and "damn the expense."
+
+While the building was under construction he was called away from the
+city. The story is related that on his return he went to see what
+progress had been made, and found mural painters at work, over the
+proscenium arch. They were painting the portrait of a man.
+
+"Who's that?" demanded Tabor.
+
+"Shakespeare," the decorator informed him.
+
+"Shakespeare--shake hell!" responded the proprietor. "He never done
+nothing for Denver. Paint him out and put me up there."
+
+Though there have been no Tabors made in Denver in the last few years,
+mining has not gone out of fashion. In the lobby of the Brown Palace
+Hotel my companion and I saw several old fellows, sitting about, looking
+neither prosperous nor busy, but always talking mines. A kind word, or
+even a pleasant glance is enough to set them off. Instantly their hands
+dive into their pockets and out come nuggets and samples of ore, which
+they polish upon their coat sleeves, and hold up proudly, turning them
+to catch the light.
+
+"Yes, sir! I made the doggondest strike up there you ever saw! It's all
+on the ground. Come over here and look at this!"
+
+To which the answer is likely to be:
+
+"No, I haven't time."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Denver Club is a central rallying place for the successful business
+men of the city. It is a splendid club, with the best of kitchens, and
+cellars, and humidors. All over the land I have met men who had been
+entertained there and who spoke of the place with something like
+affection.
+
+One night, several weeks after we had left Denver, we were at the
+Bohemian Club in San Francisco, and fell to talking of Denver and her
+clubs.
+
+"It was in a club in Denver," one man said, "that I witnessed the most
+remarkable thing I saw in Colorado."
+
+"What was that?" we asked.
+
+"I met a former governor of the State there one night," he said. "We sat
+around the fire. Every now and then he would hit the very center of a
+cuspidor which stood fifteen feet away. The remarkable thing about it
+was that he didn't look more than forty-five years old. I have always
+wondered how a man of that age could have carried his responsibility as
+governor, yet have found time to learn to spit so superbly."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+HITTING A HIGH SPOT
+
+
+An enthusiastic young millionaire, the son of a pioneer, determined that
+my companion and I ought to see the mountain parks.
+
+It was winter, and for reasons all too plainly visible from Denver, no
+automobiles had attempted the ascent since fall, for the mountain
+barrier, rearing itself majestically to the westward, glittered
+appallingly with ice and snow.
+
+"We can have a try at it, anyway," said our friend.
+
+So, presently, in furs, and surrounded by lunch baskets and thermos
+bottles, we set out for the mountains in his large six-cylinder machine.
+
+Emerging from the city, and taking the macadamized road which leads to
+Golden, we had our first uninterrupted view of the full sweep of that
+serrated mountain wall, visible for almost a hundred miles north of
+Denver, and a hundred south; a solid, stupendous line, flashing as
+though the precious minerals had been coaxed out to coruscate in the
+warm surface sunshine.
+
+There was something operatic in that vast and splendid spectacle. I felt
+that the mountains and the sky formed the back drop in a continental
+theater, the stage of which is made up of thousands of square miles of
+plains.
+
+Striking a pleasant pace we sped toward the barrier as though meaning to
+dash ourselves against it; for it seemed very near, and our car was like
+some great moth fascinated by the flash of ice and snow. However, as is
+usual where the air is clear and the altitude great, the eye is deceived
+as to distances in Colorado, and the foothills, which appear to be not
+more than three or four miles distant from Denver, are in reality a
+dozen miles away.
+
+Denver has many stock stories to illustrate that point. It is related
+that strangers sometimes start to walk to the mountains before
+breakfast, and the tale is told of one man who, having walked for hours,
+and thus discovered the illusory effect of the clear mountain air, was
+found undressing by a four-foot irrigation ditch, preparatory to
+swimming it, having concluded that, though it looked narrow, it was,
+nevertheless in reality a river.
+
+Nor is optical illusion regarding distances the only quality contained
+in Denver air. Denver and Colorado Springs are of course famous resorts
+for persons with weak lungs, but one need not have weak lungs to feel
+the tonic effect of the climate. Denver has little rain and much
+sunshine. Her winter air seems actually to hold in solution Colorado
+gold. My companion and I found it difficult to get to sleep at night
+because of the exhilarating effect of the air, but we would awaken in
+the morning after five or six hours' slumber, feeling abnormally lively.
+
+I spoke about that to a gentleman who was a member of our automobile
+mountain party.
+
+"There's no doubt," he replied, as we bowled along, "that this altitude
+affects the nerves. Even animals feel it. I have bought a number of
+eastern show horses and brought them out here, and I have found that
+horses which were entirely tractable in their habitual surroundings,
+would become unmanageable in our climate. Even a pair of Percherons
+which were perfectly placid in St. Louis, where I got them, stepped up
+like hackneys when they reached Denver.
+
+"I think a lot of the agitation we have out here comes from the same
+thing. Take our passionate political quarreling, or our newspapers and
+the way they abuse each other. Or look at Judge Lindsey. I think the
+altitude is partly accountable for him, as well as for a lot of things
+the rest of us do. Of course it's a good thing in one way: it makes us
+energetic; but on the other hand, we are likely to have less balance
+than people who don't live a mile up in the air."
+
+As we talked, our car breezed toward the foothills. Presently we entered
+the mouth of a narrow canyon and, after winding along rocky slopes,
+emerged upon the town of Golden.
+
+Golden, now known principally as the seat of the State School of Mines,
+used to be the capital of Colorado. Spread out upon a prairie the place
+might assume an air of some importance, but stationed as it is upon a
+slope, surrounded by gigantic peaks, it seems a trifling town clinging
+to the mountainside as a fly clings to a horse's back.
+
+The slope upon which Golden is situated is a comparatively gentle one,
+but directly back of the city the angle changes and the surface of the
+world mounts abruptly toward the heavens, which seem to rest like a
+great coverlet upon the upland snows.
+
+Rivulets from the melting white above, were running through the streets
+of Golden, turning them to a sea of mud, through which we plowed
+powerfully on "third." As we passed into the backyard of Golden, the
+mountain seemed to lean out over us.
+
+"That's our road, up there," remarked the Denver gentleman who sat in
+the tonneau, between my companion and myself. He pointed upward,
+zig-zagging with his finger.
+
+We gazed at the mountainside.
+
+"You don't mean that little dark slanting streak like a wire running
+back and forth, do you?" asked my companion.
+
+"Yes, that's it. You see they've cut a little nick into the slope all
+the way up and made a shelf for the road to run on."
+
+"Is there any wall at the edge?" I asked.
+
+"No," he said. "There's no wall yet. We may have that later, but you see
+we have just built this road."
+
+"Isn't there even a fence?"
+
+"No. But it's all right. The road is wide enough."
+
+Presently we reached the bottom of the road, and began the actual
+ascent.
+
+"Is this it?" asked my companion.
+
+"Yes, this is it. You see the pavement is good."
+
+"But I thought you said the road was wide?"
+
+"Well, it is wide--that is, for a mountain road. You can't expect a
+mountain road to be as wide as a city boulevard, you know."
+
+"But suppose we should meet somebody," I put in. "How would we pass?"
+
+"There's room enough to pass," said the Denver gentleman. "You've only
+got to be a little careful. But there is no chance of our meeting any
+one. Most people wouldn't think of trying this road in winter because of
+the snow."
+
+"Do you mean that the snow makes it dangerous?" asked my companion.
+
+"Some people seem to think so," said the Denver gentleman.
+
+Meanwhile the gears had been singing their shrill, incessant song as we
+mounted, swiftly. My seat was at the outside of the road. I turned my
+head in the direction of the plains. From where I sat the edge of the
+road was invisible. I had a sense of being wafted along through the air
+with nothing but a cushion between me and an abyss. I leaned out a
+little, and looked down at the wheel beneath me. Then I saw that several
+feet of pavement, lightly coated with snow, intervened between
+the tire, and the awful edge. Beyond the edge was several hundred feet
+of sparkling air, and beyond the air I saw the roofs of Golden.
+
+[Illustration: "Ain't Nature wonderful!"]
+
+One of these roofs annoyed me. I do not know the nature of the building
+it adorned. It may have been a church, or a school, or a town hall. I
+only know that the building had a tower, rising to an acute point from
+which a lightning rod protruded like a skewer. When I first caught sight
+of it I shuddered and turned my eyes upward toward the mountain. I did
+not like to gaze up at the heights which we had yet to climb, but I
+liked it better on the whole than looking down into the depths below.
+
+"What mountain do you call this?" I asked, trying to make diverting
+conversation.
+
+"Which one?" asked the Denver gentleman.
+
+"The one we are climbing."
+
+"This is just one of the foothills," he declared.
+
+"Oh," I said.
+
+"If this is a foothill," remarked my companion, "I suppose the
+Adirondacks are children's sand piles."
+
+"See how blue the plains are," said the Denver gentleman sweeping the
+landscape with his arm. "People compare them with the sea."
+
+I did not wish to see how blue the plains were, but out of courtesy I
+looked. Then I turned my eyes away, hastily. The spacious view did not
+strike me in the sense of beauty, but in the pit of the stomach. In
+looking away from the plains, I tried to do so without noticing the
+town below. I did not wish to contemplate that pointed tower, again. But
+a terrible curiosity drew my eyes down. Yes, there was Golden, looking
+like a toy village. And there was the tower, pointing up at me. I could
+not see the lightning rod now, but I knew that it was there. Again I
+looked up at the peaks.
+
+For a time we rode on in silence. I noticed that the snow on the slope
+beside us, and in the road, was becoming deeper now, but it did not seem
+to daunt our powerful machine. Up, up we went without slackening our
+pace.
+
+"Look!" exclaimed the Denver gentleman after a time. "You can see Denver
+now, just over the top of South Table Mountain."
+
+Again I was forced to turn my eyes in the direction of the plains. Yes,
+there was Denver, looking like some dream island of Maxfield Parrish's
+in the sea of plain.
+
+I tried to look away again at once, but the Denver man kept pointing and
+insisting that I see it all.
+
+"South Table Mountain, over the top of which you are now looking," he
+said, "is the same hill we skirted in coming into Golden. We were at the
+bottom of it then. That will show you how we have climbed already."
+
+"We must be halfway up by now," said my companion hopefully.
+
+"Oh, no; not yet. We are only about--" There he broke off suddenly and
+clutched at the side of the tonneau. Our front wheels had slipped
+sidewise in the snow, upon a turn, and had brought us very near the
+edge. Again something drew my eyes to Golden. It was no longer a toy
+village; it was now a map. But the tower was still there. However far we
+drove we never seemed to get away from it.
+
+Where the brilliant sunlight lay upon the snow, it was melting, but in
+shaded places it was dry as talcum powder. Rounding another turn we came
+upon a place of deep shadow, where the riotous mountain winds had blown
+the dry snow into drifts. One after the other we could see them reaching
+away like white waves toward the next angle in the road.
+
+My heart leaped with joy at the sight, and as I felt the restraining
+grip of the brakes upon our wheels, I blessed the elements which barred
+our way.
+
+"Well," I cried to our host as the car stood still. "It has been a
+wonderful ride. I never thought we should get as far as this."
+
+"Neither did I!" exclaimed my companion rising to his feet. "I guess
+I'll get out and stretch my legs while you turn around."
+
+"So will I," I said.
+
+Our host looked back at us.
+
+"Turn around?" he repeated. "I'm not going to turn around."
+
+My companion measured the road with his eye.
+
+"It is sort of narrow for a turn, isn't it?" he said. "What will you
+do--back down?"
+
+"Back nothing!" said our host "I'm going through."
+
+The pioneer in him had spoken. His jaw was set. The joy that I had felt
+ebbed suddenly away. I seemed to feel it leaking through the soles of my
+feet. We had stopped in the shadow. It was cold there and the wind was
+blowing hard. I did not like that place, but little as I liked it, I
+fairly yearned to stop there.
+
+I heard the gears click as they meshed. The car leaped forward, struck
+the drift, bounded into it with a drunken, slewing motion, penetrated
+for some distance and finally stopped, her headlights buried in the
+snow.
+
+Again I heard a click as our host shifted to reverse. Then, with a
+furious spinning of wheels, which cast the dry snow high in air, we made
+a bouncing, backward leap and cleared the drift, but only to charge it
+again.
+
+This time we managed to get through. Nor did we stop at that. Having
+passed the first drift, we retained our momentum and kept on through
+those that followed, hitting them as a power dory hits succeeding waves
+in a choppy sea, churning our way along with a rocking, careening, crazy
+motion, now menaced by great boulders at the inside of the road, now by
+the deadly drop at the outside, until at last we managed, somehow, to
+navigate the turning, after which we stopped in a place comparatively
+clear of snow.
+
+Our host turned to us with a smile.
+
+"She's a good old snow-boat, isn't she?" he said.
+
+With great solemnity my companion and I admitted that she was.
+
+Even the Denver gentleman who occupied the tonneau with us, seemed
+somewhat shaken.
+
+"Of course the snow will be worse farther up," he said to our host. "Do
+you think it is worth going on?"
+
+"Of course it is," our host replied. "I want these boys to see the main
+range of the Rockies. That's what we came up for, isn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said my companion, "but we wouldn't want you to spoil your car on
+our account."
+
+It was an unfortunate remark.
+
+"Spoil her!" cried our host. "Spoil this machine? You don't know her.
+You haven't seen what she can do, yet. Just wait until we hit a real
+drift!"
+
+The cigar which I had been smoking when I left Denver was still in my
+mouth. It had gone out long since, but I had been too much engrossed
+with other things to notice it. Instead of relighting it, I had been
+turning it over and over between my teeth, and now in an emotional
+moment, I chewed at it so hard that it sagged down against my chin. I
+removed it from my mouth, and tossed it over the edge. It cleared the
+road and sailed out into space, down, down, down, turning over and over
+in the air, as it went. And as I watched its evolutions, my blood
+chilled, for I thought to myself that the body of a falling man would
+turn in just that way--that my body would be performing similar aerial
+evolutions, should our car slew off the road in the course of some mad
+charge against a drift.
+
+I was by this time very definitely aware that I had my fill of winter
+motoring in the mountains. The mere reluctance I had felt as we began to
+climb had now developed into a passionate desire to desist. I am no
+great pedestrian. Under ordinary circumstances the idea of climbing a
+mountain on foot would never occur to me. But now, since I could not
+turn back, since I must go to the top to satisfy my host, I fairly
+yearned to walk there. Indeed, I would have gladly crawled there on my
+hands and knees, through snowdrifts, rather than to have proceeded
+farther in that touring car.
+
+Obviously, however, craft was necessary.
+
+"I believe I'll get out and limber up a little," I said, rising from my
+seat.
+
+My companions of the tonneau seemed to be of the same mind. All three of
+us alighted in the snow.
+
+"How far is it to the top?" I asked our host.
+
+"A couple of miles," he said.
+
+"Is that all?" I replied. "Couldn't we walk it, then?"
+
+I was touched by the avidity with which my two companions seized on the
+suggestion. Only our host objected.
+
+"What's the matter?" he demanded in an injured tone. "Don't you think my
+car can make it? If you'll just get in again you'll soon see!"
+
+"Heavens, no!" I answered. "That's not it. Of course we _know_ your car
+can do it."
+
+"Yes; oh, yes, of course!" the other two chimed in.
+
+"All I was thinking of," I added, "was the exercise."
+
+"That's it," my companion cried. "Exercise. We haven't had a bit of
+exercise since we left New York."
+
+"I need it, too!" put in the Denver man. "My wife says I'm getting fat."
+
+"Oh, if it's exercise you want," said our host, "I'm with you."
+
+Even the spirits of the chauffeur seemed to rise as his employer
+alighted.
+
+"I think I had better stay with the car, sir," he said.
+
+"All right, all right," said our host indifferently. "You can be turning
+her around. We'll be back in a couple of hours or so."
+
+The chauffeur looked at the edge.
+
+"Well," he said, "I don't know but what the exercise will do me good,
+too. I guess I'll come along if you don't mind, sir."
+
+On foot we could pick our way, avoiding the larger drifts, so that, for
+the most part, we merely trudged through snow a foot deep. But it was
+uphill work in the sun, and before long overcoats were removed and
+cached at the roadside, weighted down against the wind with stones. Now
+and then we left the road and took a short cut up the mountainside,
+wading through drifts which were sometimes armpit deep and joining the
+road again where it doubled back at a higher elevation. Presently our
+coats came off, then our waistcoats, until at last all five of us were
+in our shirts, making a strange picture in such a wintry landscape.
+
+Now that the dread of skidding was removed I began to enjoy myself,
+taking keen delight in the marvelous blue plains spread out everywhere
+to the eastward, and inhaling great drafts of effervescent air.
+
+When we had struggled upward for perhaps two hours we left the road and
+assailed a little peak, from the top of which our host believed the main
+range of the Rockies would be visible. The slope was rather steep, but
+the ground beneath the snow was fairly smooth, giving us moderately good
+footing. By making transverse paths we zigzagged without much difficulty
+to the top, which was sharp, like the backbone of some gigantic animal.
+
+I must admit that I had not been so anxious to see the main range as my
+Denver friends had been to have me see it. It did not seem to me that
+any mountain spectacle could be much finer than that presented by the
+glittering wall as seen from Denver. I had expected to be disappointed
+at the sight of the main range, and I am glad that I expected that,
+because it made all the greater the thrill which I felt when, on topping
+the hill, I saw what was beyond.
+
+I do not believe that any experience in life can give the ordinary
+man--the man who is not a real explorer of new places--the sense of
+actual discovery and of great achievement, which he may attain by
+laboring up a slope and looking over it at a vast range of mountains
+glittering, peak upon peak, into the distance. The sensation is
+overwhelming. It fills one with a strange kind of exaltation, like that
+which is produced by great music played by a splendid orchestra. The
+golden air, vibrating and shimmering, is like the tremolo of violins; the
+shadows in the abysses are like the deep throbbing notes of violoncellos
+and double basses; while the great peaks, rising in their might and
+majesty, suggest the surge and rumble of pipe organs echoing to the
+vault of heaven.
+
+[Illustration: I was by this time very definitely aware that I had my
+fill of winter motoring in the mountains. The mere reluctance I felt as
+we began to climb had now developed into a passionate desire to
+desist]
+
+I had often heard that, to some people, certain kinds of music suggest
+certain colors. Here, in the silence of the mountains, I understood that
+thing for the first time, for the vast forms of those jewel-encrusted
+hills seemed to give off a superb symphonic song--a song with an air
+which, when I let my mind drift with it, seemed to become definite, but
+which, when I tried to follow it, melted into vague, elusive harmonies.
+
+There is no place in the world where Man can get along for more than two
+or three minutes at a time without thinking of himself. Everything with
+which he comes in contact suggests him to himself. Nothing is too small,
+nothing too stupendous, to make man think of man. If he sees an ant he
+thinks: "That, in its humble way, is a little replica of me, doing my
+work." But when he looks upon a mountain range he thinks more salutary
+thoughts, for if his thoughts about himself are ever humble, they will
+be humble then. Indeed, it would be like man to say that that was the
+purpose with which mountains were made--to humble him. For it is man's
+pleasure to think that everything in the universe was created with some
+definite relation to himself.
+
+However that may be, it is man's habit, when he looks upon the
+mountains, to endeavor to make up for the long vainglorious years with a
+brief but complete orgy of self-abnegation. And that, of course, is a
+good thing for him, although it seems a pity that he cannot spread it
+thinner and thereby make it last him longer. But man does not like to
+take his humility that way. He prefers to take it like any other
+sickening medicine, gulping it down in one big draft, and getting it
+over with. That is the reason man can never bear to stay for any length
+of time upon a mountain top. Up there he finds out what he really is,
+and for man to find that out is, naturally, painful.
+
+As he looks at the mountains the ego, which is 99 per cent. of him,
+begins to shrivel up. He may not feel it at first. Probably he doesn't.
+Very likely he begins by writing his own name in the eternal snows, or
+scratching his initials on a rock. But presently he gazes off into space
+and remarks with the Poet Towne: "Ain't Nature wonderful!" And, of
+course, after that he begins to think of himself again, saying with a
+great sense of discovery: "What a little thing I am!" Then, as his ego
+shrinks farther, the orgy of humility begins.
+
+"What am I," he cries, "in the eyes of the eternal hills? I am
+relatively unimportant! By George, I shouldn't be surprised if I were a
+miserable atom! Yes, that's what I am! I am a frail, wretched thing,
+created but to be consumed. My life is but a day. I am a poor,
+two-legged nonentity, trotting about the surface of an enormous ball. I
+am filled with egotism and self-interest. I call myself civilized--and
+why? Because I have learned to make sounds through my mouth, and have
+assigned certain meanings to these sounds; because I have learned to
+mark down certain symbols, to represent these sounds; and because, with
+my sounds and symbols, I can maintain a ragged interchange of ragged
+thought with other men, getting myself, for the most part, beautifully
+misunderstood.
+
+"Of what else is my life composed? Of the search for something I call
+'pleasure' and something else I call 'success,' which is represented by
+piles of little yellow metal disks that I designate by the
+silly-sounding word, 'money.' I spend six days in the week in search of
+money, and on the seventh day I relax and read the Sunday newspapers, or
+put on my silk hat and go to church, where I call God's attention to
+myself in every way I can, praying to Him with prayers which have to be
+written for me because I haven't brains enough to make a good prayer of
+my own; singing hymns to Him in a voice which ought never to be raised
+in song; telling Him that I know He watches over me; putting a little
+metal disk, of small denomination, in the plate for Him; then putting on
+my shiny hat again--which I know pleases Him very much--going home and
+eating too much dinner."
+
+That is the way man thinks about himself upon a mountain top. Naturally
+he can only stand it for a little while before his contracting ego
+begins to shriek in pain.
+
+Then man says: "I have enjoyed the view. I will note the fact in the
+visitors' book if there happens to be one, after which I will retire
+from this high elevation to the world below."
+
+Going down the mountain he begins to say to himself: "What wonderful
+thoughts I have been thinking up there! I have had thoughts which very
+few other men are capable of thinking! I have a remarkable mind if I
+only take the time to use it!"
+
+So, as he goes down, his ego keeps on swelling up again until it not
+only reaches its normal size, but becomes larger than ever, because the
+man now believes that, in addition to all he was before, he has become a
+philosopher.
+
+"I must write a book!" he says to himself. "I must give these remarkable
+ideas of mine to the world!"
+
+And, as you see, he sometimes does it.
+
+[Illustration: The homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place
+and the society is as cosmopolitan as the architecture]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+COLORADO SPRINGS
+
+
+In a certain city that I visited upon my travels, I met one night at
+dinner, one of those tall, pink-cheeked, slim-legged young polo-playing
+Englishmen, who proceeded to tell me in his positive, British way,
+exactly what the United States amounted to. He said New York was
+ripping. He said San Francisco was ripping. He said American girls were
+ripping.
+
+"But," said he, "there are just two really civilized places between your
+Atlantic and Pacific coasts."
+
+The idea entertained me. I asked which places he meant.
+
+"Chicago," he said, "and Colorado Springs."
+
+"But Colorado Springs is a little bit of a place, isn't it?" I asked
+him.
+
+"About thirty thousand."
+
+"Why is it so especially civilized?"
+
+"It just _is_, y'know," he answered. "There's polo there."
+
+"But polo doesn't make civilization," I said.
+
+"Oh, yes, it does," he insisted. "I mean to say wherever you find polo
+you find good clubs and good society and--usually--good tea."
+
+This, and further rumors of a like nature, plus some pleasant letters
+of introduction, caused my companion and me to remove ourselves, one
+afternoon, from Denver to the vaunted seat of civilization, some miles
+to the south.
+
+Colorado Springs is somewhat higher than Denver and seems to nestle
+closer to the mountains. The moment you alight from the train and see
+the park, facing the station and the pleasant facade of the Antlers
+Hotel, beyond, you feel the peculiar charm of the little city. It is
+well laid-out, with very wide streets, very good public buildings and
+office buildings, and really remarkable homes.
+
+The homes of Colorado Springs really explain the place. They are of
+every variety of architecture, and are inhabited by a corresponding
+variety of people. You will see half-timbered English houses, built by
+Englishmen and Scots; Southern colonial houses built by people from the
+South Atlantic States; New England colonial houses built by families who
+have migrated from the regions of Boston and New York; one-story houses
+built by people from Hawaii, and a large assortment of other houses
+ranging from Queen Anne to Cape Cod cottages, and from Italian villas to
+Spanish palaces. There is even the Grand Trianon at Broadmoor, and an
+amazing Tudor castle at Glen Eyre.
+
+The society is as cosmopolitan as the architecture. It has been drawn
+with perfect impartiality from the well-to-do class in all parts of the
+country and has been assembled in this charming garden town with, for
+the most part, a common reason--to fight against tuberculosis. This
+does not mean, of course, that the majority of people in Colorado
+Springs are victims of tuberculosis, but only that, in many instances,
+families have moved there because of the affliction of one member.
+
+I say "affliction." Literally, I suppose the word is justified. But
+perhaps the most striking thing about society in Colorado Springs is its
+apparent freedom from affliction. One goes to the most delightful dinner
+parties, there, in the most delightful houses, and meets the most
+delightful people. Every one seems very gay. Every one looks well. Yet
+one knows that there are certain persons present who are out there for
+their health. The question is, which? It is impossible to tell.
+
+In the case of one couple I met, I decided that the wife who was slender
+and rather pale, had been the cause of migration from the East. But
+before I left, the stocky, ruddy husband told me, in the most cheerful
+manner that he had arrived there twenty years before with "six months to
+live." That is the way it is out there. There is no feeling of
+depression. There is no air of, "Shh! Don't speak of it!" Tuberculosis
+is taken quite as a matter of course, and is spoken of, upon occasion,
+with a lightness and freedom which is likely to surprise the visitor.
+They even give it what one man designated as a "pet name," calling it
+"T. B."
+
+Club life in Colorado Springs is highly developed. The El Paso Club is
+not merely a good club for such a small city, but would be a very good
+club anywhere. One has only to penetrate as far as the cigar stand to
+discover that--for a club may always be known by the cigars it keeps.
+So, too, with the Cheyenne Mountain Country Club at Broadmoor, a suburb
+of the Springs. It isn't one of those small-town country clubs, in
+which, after ringing vainly for the waiter, you go out to the kitchen
+and find him for yourself, in his shirtsleeves and minus a collar. Nor,
+when he puts in his appearance, is he wearing a spotted alpaca coat that
+doesn't fit. Without being in the least pretentious, it is a real
+country club, run for men and women who know what a real club is.
+
+When you sit at luncheon at the large round table in the men's cafe you
+may find yourself between a famous polo-player from Meadowbrook, and a
+bronzed young ranch-owner, who will tell you that cattle rustling still
+goes on in his section of the country. The latter you will take for a
+perfect product of the West, a "gentleman cowboy," from a novel. But
+presently you will learn that he is a member of that almost equally
+fictitious thing, an "old New York family," that he has been in the West
+but a year or two, and that he was in "Tark's class" at Princeton. So on
+around the table. One man has just arrived from Paris; another from
+Honolulu, or the Philippines, or China or Japan. And when, as we were
+sitting there, a man came in whom I had met in Rome ten years before, I
+said to myself: This is not life. It is the beginning of a short story
+by some disciple of Mrs. Wharton: A group of cosmopolitans seated
+around a table in a club. Casual mention of Bombay, Buda-Pesth and
+Singapore. Presently some man will flick his cigarette ash and say, "By
+the way, De Courcey, what ever became of the queer little chap we used
+to see at the officer's mess in Simla?" Whereupon De Courcey, late of
+the Lancers, and second son of Lord Thusandso, will light a fresh Corona
+and recount, according to the accepted formula, the story of The Queer
+Little Chap.
+
+I could even imagine the illustrations for the story. They would be by
+Wenzell, and would show us there, in the club, like a group of sleek
+Greek statues, clothed in full afternoon regalia of the most
+unbelievable smoothness--looking, in short, not at all like ourselves,
+or anybody else.
+
+However, the story of The Queer Little Chap was not told. That is the
+trouble with trying to live short stories. You can get them started,
+sometimes, but they never work out. If the setting is all right, the
+story somehow will not "break," whereas, on the other hand, when the
+surroundings are absolutely wrong, when the wrong people are present,
+when the conditions are utterly impossible, your short story will break
+violently and without warning, and will very likely cover you with
+spots. The trouble is that life, in its more fragmentary departments,
+lacks what we call "form" and "composition." There is something
+amateurish about it. Nine editors out of ten would reject a short story
+written by the Hand of Fate, on this ground, and would probably advise
+Fate to go and take a course in short-story-writing at some university.
+No; Fate has not the short story gift. She writes novels--rather long
+and rambling, most of them, like those of De Morgan or Romaine Rolland.
+But even her novels are not popular. People say they are too long. They
+can't be bothered reading novels which consume a whole lifetime.
+Besides, Fate seldom supplies a happy ending, and that's what people
+want, now-a-days. So, though Fate's novels are given away, they have no
+vogue.
+
+Having somehow digressed from clubs to authorship I may perhaps be
+pardoned for wandering still further from my trail here to mention Andy
+Adams.
+
+A long time ago, ex-Governor Hunt expressed lack of faith in the future
+of Colorado Springs because, at that time, there was not much water to
+be found there, and further because the town had "too many writers of
+original poetry." So far as I could judge, from a brief visit, things
+have changed. There is plenty of water, and I did not meet a single
+poet. However, I did meet an author, and he is a real one. Andy Adams'
+card proclaims him author, but more than this, his books do, also.
+Himself a former cowboy, he writes cowboy stories which prove that
+cowboy stories need not be as false, and as maudlinly romantic as most
+cowboy stories manage to be. You don't have to know the plains to know
+that Mr. Adams' tales are true, any more than you have to know anatomy
+to understand that a man can't stand without a backbone. Truth is the
+backbone of Mr. Adams' writings, and the body of them has that rare kind
+of beauty which may, perhaps, be likened to the body of some
+cowboy--some perfect physical specimen from Mr. Adams' own pages.
+
+I have not read all his books, and the only reason why I have not is
+that I have not yet had time. But so far as I have read I have not found
+one false note in them. I have not come upon a "lone horseman" riding
+through the gulch at eventide. I have not encountered the daughter of an
+eastern millionaire who has ridden out to see the sunset. Nor have I
+stumbled on a romantic meeting or a theatrical rescue.
+
+So far as I know, Mr. Adams' book "The Log of a Cowboy," is preeminently
+the classic of the plains. One of its greatest qualities is that of
+ceaseless movement. Three thousand head of cattle are driven through
+those chapters, from the Mexican frontier to the Canada border, and
+those cattle travel with a flow as irresistible as the unrelenting flow
+of De Quincey's Tartar tribe.
+
+The author is one of those absolutely basic things, a natural story
+teller, and the fine simplicity of his writing springs not from
+education ("All the schooling I ever had I picked up at a cross-roads
+country school house"), not from an academic knowledge of "literature,"
+but from primary qualities in his own nature, and the strong, ingenuous
+outlook of his own two eyes.
+
+Mr. Henry Russell Wray tells of a request from eastern publishers for a
+brief sketch of Adams' life. He asked Adams to write about two hundred
+words about himself, as though dealing with another being. The next day
+he received this:
+
+     A native of Indiana; went to Texas during his youth; worked over
+     ten years on cattle ranches and on the trail, rising from common
+     hand on the latter to a foreman. Quit cattle fifteen years ago,
+     following business and mining occupations since. When contrasted
+     with the present generation is just beginning to realize that the
+     old days were romantic, though did not think so when sitting a
+     saddle sixteen to twenty-four hours a day in all kinds of weather.
+     His insight into cattle life was not obtained from the window of a
+     Pullman car, but close to the soil and from the hurricane deck of a
+     Texas horse. Even to-day is a better cowman than writer, for he can
+     yet rope and tie down a steer with any of the boys, though the loop
+     of his rope may settle on the wrong foot of the rhetoric
+     occasionally. He is of Irish and Scotch parentage. Forty-three
+     years of age, six feet in height and weighs 210 pounds.
+
+Though I met Mr. Adams at Colorado Springs, I shall, for obvious
+reasons, let my description of him rest at that.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When writing of clubs I should have mentioned the Cooking Club, which is
+one of the most unique little clubs of the country. The fifteen members
+of this club are the gourmets of Colorado Springs--not merely passive
+gourmets who like to have good things set before them, but active ones
+who know how to prepare good things as well as eat them. Every little
+while, throughout the season, the Cooking Club gives dinners, to which
+each member may invite a guest or two. Each takes his turn in acting as
+host, his duties upon this occasion being to draw up the menu, supply
+materials, appoint members to prepare certain courses, and, wearing the
+full regalia of a chef, superintend the preparation of the meal, which
+is cooked entirely by men belonging to the club. Wine is not served at
+Cooking Club dinners, the official beverage being the club Rum Brew,
+which has a considerable local reputation, and is everywhere pronounced
+adequate. Not a few of the members learned to cook in the course of
+prospecting tours in the mountains, and the Easterner who, with this
+fact in mind, attends a Cooking Club dinner is led to revise,
+immediately, certain preconceived ideas of the hard life of the
+prospector. No man has a hard life who can cook himself such dishes.
+Indeed, one is forced to the conclusion that Colorado is full of
+undiscovered mines, which would have been uncovered long ago, were it
+not that prospectors go up into the mountains for the primary purpose of
+cooking themselves the most delightful meals, and that mining is--as
+indeed it should be--a mere side issue. For myself, while I have no
+taste for the hardy life of the mountaineer, I would gladly become a
+prospector, even if it were guaranteed in advance that I should discover
+nothing, providing that Eugene P. Shove would go along with me and make
+the biscuits.
+
+Aside from its clubs Colorado Springs has all the other things which go
+to the making of a pleasant city. The Burns Theater is a model of what a
+theater should be. The Antlers Hotel would do credit to the shores of
+Lake Lucerne. Where the "antlers" part of it comes in, I am unable to
+say, but as nothing else was lacking, from the kitchen, down stairs, to
+Pike's Peak looming up in the back yard, I have no complaint to make.
+
+I suppose that every one who has heard of Colorado Springs at all,
+associates it with the famous Garden of the Gods.
+
+Before I started on my travels I was aware of the fact that the two
+great natural wonders of the East are Niagara Falls and the insular New
+Yorker. I knew that the great, gorgeous, glittering galaxy of American
+wonders was, however, in the West, but the location and character of
+them was somewhat vague in my mind. I knew, of course, that Pike's Peak
+was a large mountain. I knew that the giant redwoods were in California.
+But for the rest, I had the Grand Canyon, the Royal Gorge, and the Garden
+of the Gods associated in my mind together as rival attractions. I do
+not know why this was so, excepting that I had been living on Manhattan
+Island, where information is notoriously scarce.
+
+Now, though I saw the Royal Gorge, though I rode through it in the cab
+of a locomotive, with my hair standing on end, and though I found it "as
+advertised," I have no idea of trying to describe it, more than to say
+that it is a great cleft in the pink rocks through which run a river and
+a railroad, and that how the latter managed to keep out of the former
+was a constant source of wonder to me.
+
+As for the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, it affects those who behold it
+with a kind of literary asthma. They desire to describe it; some try,
+passionately; but they only wheeze and look as though they might
+explode. Since it is generally admitted that no one who has seen it can
+describe it, the task would manifestly devolve upon some one who has not
+seen it, and that requirement is filled by me. I have not seen it. I am
+not impressed by it at all. I am able to speak of it with coherence and
+restraint. But even that I shall not do.
+
+With the Garden of the Gods it is different. The place irritated me. For
+if ever any spot was outrageously overnamed, it is that one. As a little
+park in the Catskills it might be all well enough, but as a natural
+wonder in the Rocky Mountains, with Pike's Peak hanging overhead, it is
+a pale pink joke. If I had my way I should take its wonder-name away
+from it, for the name is too fine to waste, and a thousand spots in
+Colorado are more worthy of it.
+
+The entrance to the place, between two tall, rose-colored sandstone
+rocks may, perhaps, be called imposing; the rest of it might better be
+described as imposition. Guides will take you through, and they will do
+their utmost, as guides always do, to make you imagine that you are
+really seeing something. They will point out inane formations in the
+sandstone rock, and will attempt to make you see that these are
+"pictures." They will show you the Kissing Camels, the Bear and Seal,
+the Buffalo, the Bride and Groom, the Preacher, the Scotsman, Punch and
+Judy, the Washerwoman, and other rock forms, sculptured by Nature into
+shapes more or less suggesting the various objects mentioned. But what
+if they do? To look at such accidentals is a pastime about as
+intelligent as looking for pictures in the moon, or in the patterns of
+the paper on your wall. As nearly as Nature can be altogether silly she
+has been silly here, and I think that only silly people will succeed in
+finding fascination in the place--the more so since Colorado Springs is
+a prohibition town.
+
+The story of prohibition there is curious. In 1870, N. C. Meeker,
+Agricultural Editor of the New York "Tribune," under Horace Greeley,
+started a colony in Colorado, bringing a number of settlers from the
+East, and naming the place Greeley. With a view to eliminating the
+roughness characteristic of frontier towns in those days, Mr. Meeker
+made Greeley a prohibition colony.
+
+When, a year after, General William J. Palmer and his associates started
+to build the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad from Denver to Colorado
+Springs, a land company was formed, subsidiary to the railway project,
+and desert property was purchased on the present site of the Springs.
+The town was then laid out and the land retailed to individuals of "good
+moral character and strict, temperate habits."
+
+In each deed given by the land company there was incorporated an
+anti-liquor clause, whereby, in the event of intoxicating liquors being
+"manufactured, sold or otherwise disposed of in any place of public
+resort on the premises," the deed should become void and the property
+revert to the company. Shortly after the formation of the colony the
+validity of this clause was tested. The suit was finally carried to the
+United States Supreme Court, where the rights of the company, under the
+prohibition clause, were upheld.
+
+General Palmer, later, in discussing the history of Colorado Springs,
+explained that the prohibitory clause was not inserted in the deeds for
+moral reasons, but that "the aim was intensely practical--to create a
+habitable and successful town."
+
+The General and his associates had had ample experience of new western
+railroad towns, and wished to eliminate the disagreeable features of
+such towns from Colorado Springs. Even then, though the prohibition
+movement had not been fairly launched in this country these practical
+men recognize the fact that Meeker had recognized; namely that with
+saloons, dance halls and gambling places, gunfighting and lynchings went
+hand in hand.
+
+It is recorded that the restriction seemed to work against the town at
+first, but, on the other hand, such growth as came was substantial, and
+Colorado Springs attracted a better class of settlers than the wide open
+towns nearby. The wisdom of this arrangement is amply proven, to-day,
+by a comparison of Colorado Springs with the neighboring town of
+Colorado City, which has not had prohibition.
+
+Even before Colorado Springs existed, General Palmer had fallen in love
+with the place and determined that he would some day have a home at the
+foot of the mountains in that neighborhood. In the early seventies he
+purchased a superb canyon a few miles west of the city, and the Tudor
+Castle which he built there, and which he named Glen Eyrie, because of
+the eagles' nests on the walls of his canyon, remains to-day one of the
+most remarkable houses on this continent.
+
+Every detail of the house as it stands, and every item in the history of
+its construction expresses the force and originality which were such
+strong attributes of its late proprietor.
+
+The General was an engineer. In the Civil War he was colonel of the 15th
+Pennsylvania Cavalry, and was breveted a general. After the war he went
+into the West and became a railroad builder. Evidently he was one of
+those men, typical of his time, who seem to have had a craving to
+condense into one lifetime the experiences and achievements of several.
+He was, so to speak, his own ancestor and his own descendant; there
+were, in effect, three generations of him: soldier, railroad builder,
+and landed baron. In his castle at Glen Eyrie one senses very strongly
+this baronial quality. Clearly the General could not be content with a
+mere modern house. He wanted a castle, and above all, an old castle.
+And, as Colorado is peculiarly free of old castles, he had to build one
+for himself. That is what he did, and the superb initiative of the man
+is again reflected in the means he used. The house must be of old
+lichen-covered stone, but, being already past middle age, the General
+could not wait on Nature. Therefore he caused the whole region to be
+scoured for flat, weathered stones which could be cut for his purpose.
+These he transported to his glen, where they were carefully cut and set
+in place, so that the moment the new wall was up it was an old wall.
+Finding the flat stones was easy, however, compared with finding those
+presenting a natural right angle, for the corners of the house.
+Nevertheless, all were ultimately discovered and laid, and the desired
+result was attained. After the house was done the General thought the
+roof lacked just the proper note of color, so he caused it to be torn
+off, and replaced with tiles from an old church in England.
+
+Perhaps the most splendid thing about the place is an enormous hall,
+paneled in oak, with a gallery and a beamed barrel ceiling, but there
+are other features which make the house unusual. On the roof is a great
+Krupp bell, which can be heard for miles, and which was used to call the
+General's guests home for meals. There is a power plant, a swimming
+pool, a complicated device for recording meteorological conditions in
+the mountains. And of course there are fireplaces in which great logs
+were burned; yet there are no chimneys on the house. The General did
+not want chimneys issuing smoke into his canyon, so he simply did not
+have them. Instead, he constructed a tunnel which runs up the
+mountainside behind the house and takes care of the smoke, emitting it
+at an unseen point, far above.
+
+Meanwhile the General played Santa Claus to Colorado Springs, giving her
+parks and boulevards. One day, while riding on his place, he was thrown
+from his horse and a vertebra was fractured, with the result that he was
+permanently prostrated. After that he lay for some time like a wounded
+eagle in his eyrie, his mind as active as ever. He was still living in
+1907, when the time for the annual reunion of his old regiment came
+around. Unable to go East, he invited the remaining veterans to come to
+him by special train, as his guests. So they came--the remnants of that
+old cavalry regiment, and passed in review, for the last time, before
+their Colonel, lying helpless with a broken neck.
+
+[Illustration: On the road to Cripple Creek--We were always turning,
+always turning upward]
+
+In its mountain setting, with the pink sandstone cliffs rising abruptly
+behind it, this castle of the General's is one of the most dramatic
+homes I have ever seen. There is a superb austerity about it, which
+makes it very different from the large homes of Broadmoor, at the other
+side of Colorado Springs. As I have already mentioned, one of these is a
+replica of the Grand Trianon; others are Elizabethan and Tudor, and many
+of them are very fine, but the house of houses at Colorado Springs is
+"El Pomar," the residence of the late Ashton H. Potter. I do not know a
+house in the United States which fits its setting better than this
+one, or which is a more perfect thing from every point of view. It is a
+one-story building of Spanish architecture--a style which, to my mind,
+fits better than any other, the sort of landscape in which plains and
+mountains meet. Houses as elaborate as the Grand Trianon, always seem to
+me to lend themselves best to a rather formal, park-like country which
+is flat, or nearly so; while Elizabethan and adapted Tudor houses of the
+kind one sees at Broadmoor, seem to cry out for English lawns, and great
+lush-growing trees to soften the hard lines of roof and gable. Such
+houses may be set in rolling country with good effect, but in the face
+of the vast mountain range which dominates this neighborhood, the most
+elaborate architecture is so completely dwarfed as to seem almost
+ridiculous. Architecture cannot compete with the Rocky Mountains; the
+best thing it can do is to submit to them: to blend itself into the
+picture as unostentatiously as possible. And that is what "El Pomar"
+does.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+CRIPPLE CREEK
+
+
+One day, during our stay at Colorado Springs, we were invited to take a
+trip to Cripple Creek.
+
+Driving to the station a friend, a resident of the Springs, pointed out
+to me a little clay hillock, beside the road.
+
+"That," he said, "is what we call Mount Washington."
+
+"I don't see the resemblance," I remarked.
+
+"Well," he explained, "the top of that little hump has an elevation of
+about six thousand three hundred feet, which is exactly the height of
+Mount Washington. You see our mountains, out here, begin where yours, in
+the East, leave off."
+
+Presently, on the little train, bound for Cripple Creek, the fact was
+further demonstrated. I had never imagined that anything less than a
+cog-road could ascend a grade so steep. All the way the grade persisted.
+Never had I seen such a railroad, either for steepness or for sinuosity.
+The train crawled slowly along ledges cut into the mountain-sides, now
+burrowing through an obstruction, now creeping from one mountain to
+another on a spindly bridge of the most shocking height, below which a
+wild torrent dashed through a rocky canyon; now slipping out upon a
+sky-high terrace commanding a view of hundreds of square miles of
+plains, now winding its way gingerly about dizzy cliffs which seemed to
+lean out over chasms, into which one looked with admiring terror; now
+coming out upon the other side, the main chain of the Rockies was
+revealed a hundred miles to the westward, glittering superbly with
+eternal ice and snow. It is an unbelievable railroad--the Cripple Creek
+Short Line. It travels fifty miles to make what, in a straight line,
+would be eighteen, and if there is, on the entire system, a hundred
+yards of track without a turn, I did not see the place. We were always
+turning; always turning upward. We would go into a tunnel and presently
+emerge at a point which seemed to be directly above the place where we
+had entered; and at times our windings, our doublings back, our
+writhings, were conducted in so limited an area that I began to fear our
+train would get tied in a knot and be unable to proceed.
+
+However, we did get to Cripple Creek, and for all its mountain setting,
+and all the three hundred millions of gold that it has yielded in the
+last twenty years or so, it is one of the most depressing places in the
+world. Its buildings run from shabbiness to downright ruin; its streets
+are ill paved, and its outlying districts are a horror of smokestacks,
+ore-dumps, shaft-houses, reduction-plants, gallows-frames and squalid
+shanties, situated in the mud. It seemed to me that Cripple Creek must
+be the most awful looking little city in the world, but I was informed
+that, as mining camps go, it is unusually presentable, and later I
+learned for myself that that is true.
+
+Cripple Creek is not only above the timber-line; it is above the
+cat-line. I mean this literally. Domestic cats cannot live there. And
+many human beings are affected by the altitude. I was. I had a headache;
+my breath was short, and upon the least exertion my heart did
+flip-flops. Therefore I did not circulate about the town excepting
+within a radius of a few blocks of the station. That, however, was
+enough.
+
+After walking up the main street a little way, I turned off into a side
+street lined with flimsy buildings, half of them tumble-down and
+abandoned. Turning into another street I came upon a long row of tiny
+one story houses, crowded close together in a block. Some of them were
+empty, but others showed signs of being occupied. And instead of a
+number, the door of each one bore a name, "Clara," "Louise," "Lina," and
+so on, down the block. For a time there was not a soul in sight as I
+walked slowly down that line of box-stall houses. Then, far ahead, I saw
+a woman come out of a doorway. She wore a loose pink wrapper and carried
+a pitcher in her hand. I watched her cross the street and go into a
+dingy building. Then the street was empty again. I walked on slowly. As
+I passed one doorway it opened suddenly and a man came out--a shabby man
+with a drooping mustache. He did not look at me as he passed. The
+window-shade of the crib from which he had come went up as I moved by.
+I looked at the window, and as I did so, the curtains parted and the
+face of a negress was pressed against the pane, grinning at me with a
+knowing, sickening grin.
+
+I passed on. From another window a white woman with very black hair and
+eyes, and cheeks of a light orchid-shade, showed her gold teeth in a
+mirthless automatic smile, and added the allurement of an ice-cold wink.
+
+The door of the crib at the corner stood open, and just before I reached
+it a woman stepped out and surveyed me as I approached. She wore a white
+linen skirt and a middy blouse, attire grotesquely juvenile for one of
+her years. Her hair, of which she had but a moderate amount, was light
+brown and stringy, and she wore gold-rimmed spectacles. She did not look
+depraved but, upon the contrary resembled a highly respectable, if
+homely, German cook I once employed. As I passed her window I saw
+hanging there a glass sign, across which, in gold letters, was the
+title, "Madam Leo."
+
+"Madam Leo," she said to me, nodding and pointing at her chest. "That's
+me. Leo, the lion, eh?" She laughed foolishly.
+
+I paused and made some casual inquiry concerning her prosperity.
+
+"Things is dull now in Cripple Creek," she said. "There ain't much
+business any more. I wish they'd start a white man's club or a dance
+hall across the street. Then Cripple Creek would be booming."
+
+I think I remarked, in reply, that things did look rather dull. In the
+meantime I glanced in at her little room. There was a chair or two, a
+cheap oak dresser, and an iron bed. The room looked neat.
+
+"Ain't I got a nice clean place?" suggested Madam Leo. Then as I
+assented, she pointed to a calendar which hung upon the wall. At the top
+of it was a colored print from some French painting, showing a Cupid
+kissing a filmily draped Psyche.
+
+"That's me," said Madam Leo. "That's me when I was a young girl!" Again
+she loosed her laugh.
+
+I started to move on.
+
+"Where are you from?" she asked.
+
+"I came up from Colorado Springs," I said.
+
+"Well," she returned, "when you go back send some nice boys up here.
+Tell them to see Madam Leo. Tell them a middle-aged woman with
+spectacles. I'm known here. I been here four years. Oh, things ain't so
+bad. I manage to make two or three dollars a day."
+
+As I passed to leeward of her on the narrow walk I got the smell of a
+strong, brutal perfume.
+
+"Have you got to be going?" she asked.
+
+"Yes," I answered. "I must go to the train."
+
+"Well, then--so long," she said.
+
+"So long."
+
+"Don't forget Madam Leo," she admonished, giving utterance, again, to
+her strident, feeble-minded laugh.
+
+"I won't," I promised.
+
+And I never, never shall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE MORMON CAPITAL
+
+
+I think it was in Kansas City that I first became conscious of the fact
+that, without my knowing it, my mind had made, in advance, imaginary
+pictures of certain sections of the country, and that, in almost every
+instance, these pictures were remarkable for their untruthfulness.
+Kansas City itself surprised me with its hills, for I had been thinking
+of it in connection with the prairies. With Denver it was the other way
+about. Thinking of Denver as a mountain city, instead of a city near the
+mountains, I expected hills, but did not find them. And when I crossed
+the Rockies, they too afforded a surprise, not because of their height,
+but because of their width. Evidently I must have had some vague idea
+that a train, traveling west from Denver, would climb very definitely up
+the Rocky Mountains, cross the Great Divide, and proceed very definitely
+down again, upon the other side, whither a sort of long, sloping plain
+would lead to California. Denver itself I thought of as being placed
+further west upon the continent than is, in reality, the case. I did not
+realize at all that the city is, in fact, only a few hundred miles west
+of the halfway point on an imaginary line drawn from coast to coast;
+nor was I aware that, instead of being for the most part sloping plain,
+the thousand miles that intervenes between Denver and the Pacific Ocean,
+is made up of series after series of mountain ranges and valleys, their
+successive crests and hollows following one another like the waves of
+the sea.
+
+In short, I had imagined that the Rockies were the whole show. I had not
+the faintest recollection of the Cordilleran System (of which the
+Rockies and all these other ranges are but a part), while as for the
+Sierra Nevadas, I remembered them only when I came to them and then much
+as one will recall a slight acquaintance who has been in jail for many
+years.
+
+Are you shocked by my ignorance--or my confession of it? Then let me ask
+you if you know that the Uintah Mountain Range, in Utah, is the only
+range in the entire country which runs east and west? And have you ever
+heard of the Pequop Mountains, or the Cedar Mountains, or the Santa
+Roasas, or the Egans, or the Humboldts, or the Washoes, or the Gosiutes,
+or the Toyales, or the Toquimas, or the Hot Creek Mountains? And did you
+know that in California as well as in New Hampshire there are the White
+Mountains? And what do you know of the Wahsatch and Oquirrh Ranges?
+
+Not wishing to keep the class in geography after school, I shall not
+tell you about all these mountains, but will satisfy myself with the
+statement that, in an amphitheater formed between the two last mentioned
+ranges, at the head of a broad, irrigated valley, is situated Salt Lake
+City.
+
+The very name of Salt Lake City had a flat sound in my ears; and in that
+mental album of imaginary photographs of cities, to which I have
+referred, I saw the Mormon capital as on a sandy plain, with the Great
+Salt Lake on one side and the Great Salt Desert on the other. Therefore,
+upon arriving, I was surprised again, for the lake is not visible at
+all, being a dozen miles distant, and the desert is removed still
+farther, while instead of sandy plains the mountains rise abruptly on
+three sides of the city, and on the fourth is the sweet valley, covered
+with rich farms and orchards, and dotted here and there with minor
+Mormon settlements.
+
+Like Mark Twain, who visited Salt Lake many years ago, before the
+railroad went there, I managed to forget the lake entirely after I had
+been there for a little while. I made no excursion to Saltair Beach, the
+playground of the neighborhood, and only saw the lake when our train
+crossed a portion of it after leaving the city.
+
+I do not know that the great pavilion at Saltair Beach, of which every
+one has seen pictures, is a Mormon property, but it well may be, for the
+Mormons have never been a narrow-minded sect with regard to decent
+gaieties. They approve of dancing, and the ragtime craze has reached
+them, for, as I was walking past the Lion House, one evening, I heard
+the music and saw a lot of young people "trotting" gaily, in the place
+where formerly resided most of the twenty odd known wives of the late
+Brigham Young. Later a Mormon told me that dances are held in Mormon
+meeting-houses and that they are always opened with prayer.
+
+Also in the cafe of the Hotel Utah there was dancing every night, and
+when the members of the "Honeymoon Express" Company put in an appearance
+there one night, we might have been on Broadway. The hotel, I was
+informed, is owned by Mormons; it is an excellent establishment. They do
+not stare at you as though they thought you an eccentric if you ask for
+tea at five o'clock, but bring it to you in the most approved fashion,
+with a kettle and a lamp, and the neatest silver tea service I have ever
+seen in an American hotel. But that is by the way, for I was speaking of
+the frivolities of Mormondom, and afternoon tea is, with me at least, a
+serious matter.
+
+Salt Lake City was, until a few years ago, a "wide open town." The
+"stockade" was famous among the red-light institutions of the country.
+But that is gone, having been washed away by our national "wave of
+reform," and the town has now a rather orderly appearance, although it
+is not without its night cafes, one of them being the inevitable
+"Maxim's," without which, it would appear, no American city is now
+complete.
+
+One of the first things the Mormons did, on establishing their city, was
+to build an amusement hall, and as long as fifty years ago, this was
+superseded by the Salt Lake Theatre, a picturesque old playhouse which
+is still standing, and which looks, inside and out, like an old wartime
+wood-cut of Ford's Theatre in Washington. Even before the railroads came
+the best actors and actresses in the country played in this theater,
+drawn there by the strong financial inducements which the Mormons
+offered, and it is interesting to note that many stage favorites of
+to-day made their first appearances in this playhouse. If I am not
+mistaken, Edwin Milton Royle made his debut as an actor there, and both
+Maude Adams and Ada Dwyer were born in Salt Lake City, and appeared upon
+the stage for the first time at the Salt Lake Theatre. Yes, it is an
+interesting and historic playhouse, and I hope that when it burns up, as
+I have no doubt it ultimately will, no audience will be present, for I
+think that it will go like tinder. And although I still bemoan the money
+which I spent to see there, a maudlin entertainment called "The
+Honeymoon Express," direct from that home of banal vulgarities, the New
+York Winter Garden, I cannot quite bring myself to hope that when the
+Salt Lake Theatre burns, the man who wrote "The Honeymoon Express," the
+manager who produced it, and the company which played it, will be
+rehearsing there. For all their sins, I should not like to see them
+burned, though as to being roasted--well, that is a different thing.
+
+Whatever may be one's opinion of the matrimonial industry of Brigham
+Young, the visitor to Salt Lake City will not dispute that the late
+leader of the Mormons knew, far better than most men of his day, how a
+town should be laid out. The blocks of Salt Lake City are rectangular;
+the lots are large, the streets wide and admirably paved with asphalt,
+almost all the houses are low, and stand in their own green grounds, and
+perhaps the most characteristic note of all is given by the poplars and
+box elders which grow everywhere, not only in the city, but throughout
+the valley.
+
+Besides my preconceptions as to the city, I arrived in Salt Lake City
+with certain preconceptions as to Mormons. I expected them to be
+radically different, somehow, from all other people I had met. I
+anticipated finding them deceitful and evasive: furtive people,
+wandering in devious ways and disappearing into mysterious houses, at
+dead of night. I wanted to see them, I wanted to talk with them, but I
+wondered, nervously, whether one might speak to them about themselves
+and their religion, and more especially, whether one might use the words
+"Mormon" and "polygamy" without giving offense.
+
+It was not without misgivings, therefore, that my companion and I went
+to keep an appointment with Joseph F. Smith, head of the Mormon
+Church--or, to give it its official title, the Church of Jesus Christ of
+Latter Day Saints. We found the President, with several high officials
+of the church, in his office at the Lion House--the large adobe building
+in which, as I have said, formerly resided the rank and file of Brigham
+Young's wives; although Amelia lived by herself, in the so called
+"Amelia Palace," across the street.
+
+Mr. Smith is a tall, dignified man who comes far from looking his full
+seventy-six years. The nose upon which he wears his gold rimmed
+spectacles is the dominant feature of his face, being one of those
+great, strong, mountainous, indomitable noses. His eyes are dark, large
+and keen, and he wears a flowing gray beard and dresses in a black
+frock-coat. He and the men around him looked like a group of strong,
+prosperous, dogmatically religious New Englanders, such as one might
+find at a directors' meeting in the back room of some very solid old
+bank in Maine or Massachusetts. Clearly they were executives and men of
+wealth. As for religion, had I not known that they were Mormons, I
+should have judged them to be either Baptists, Methodists or
+Presbyterians.
+
+The occasion did not prove to be a gay one. I tried to explain to the
+Mormons that I was writing impressions of my travels and that I had
+desired to meet them because, in Salt Lake City, the Mormons seemed to
+supply the greatest interest.
+
+But even after I had explained my mission, a frigid air prevailed, and I
+felt that here, at least, I would get but scant material. Their attitude
+perplexed me. I could not believe they were embarrassed, although I knew
+that I was.
+
+Then presently the mystery was cleared up, for President Smith launched
+out upon a statement of his opinion regarding "Collier's Weekly"--the
+paper in which many of these chapters first appeared--and I became
+suddenly and painfully aware that I was being mistaken for a
+muckraker.
+
+The President's opinion of "Collier's" was more frank than flattering,
+and though one or two of the other Mormons, who seemed to understand our
+aims, tried to smooth matters over in the interests of harmony, he would
+not be mollified, but insisted vigorously that "Collier's" had printed
+outrageous lies about him. This was all news to me, for, as it happened,
+I had not read the articles to which he referred, and for which, as a
+representative of "Collier's," I was now, apparently, being held
+responsible. I explained that to the President of the Church, whereupon
+he simmered down somewhat, but I think he still regarded my companion
+and me with suspicion, and was glad to see us go.
+
+Thus did we suffer for the sins of Sarah Comstock.
+
+It may not seem necessary to add that the subject of polygamy was not
+mentioned in that conversation.
+
+In thinking over our encounter with these leading Mormons I could not
+feel surprised, for all that I have read about this sect has been in the
+nature of attacks. Mark Twain tells about what was called a "Destroying
+Angel" of the Mormon Church, stating that, "as I understand it, they are
+Latter Day Saints who are set apart by the Church to conduct permanent
+disappearances of obnoxious citizens." He characterizes the one he met
+as "a loud, profane, offensive old blackguard." But Mormon Destroying
+Angels are things of the past, as, I believe, are Mormon visions of
+Empire, and Mormon aggressions of all kinds. Another book, Harry Leon
+Wilson's novel, "The Lions of the Lord," was not calculated to soothe
+the Mormon sensibilities, and of the numerous articles in magazines and
+newspapers which I have read--most of them with regard to polygamy--I
+recall none that has not dealt with them severely.
+
+Now, remembering that whatever we may believe, the Mormons believe
+devoutly in their religion, what must be their point of view about all
+this? Their story is not different from any other in that it has two
+sides. If they did commit aggressions in the early days, which seems to
+have been the case, they were also the victims of persecution from the
+very start, and it is difficult to determine, at this late day, whether
+they, or those who made their lives in the East unbearable, were most at
+fault.
+
+According to Mormon history the church had its very beginnings in
+religious dissension. It is recounted by the Mormons that Joseph Smith,
+Jr., founder of the church (he was the uncle of the present President),
+attended revival meetings in Manchester, Vermont, and was so confused by
+the differences of opinion and the ill-feeling between different sects
+that he prayed to the Lord to tell him which was the true religion. In
+regard to this, Smith wrote that after his prayer, "a mysterious power
+of darkness overcame me. I could not speak and I felt myself in the
+grasp of an unseen personage of darkness. My soul went up in an
+unuttered prayer for deliverance, and as I was about despairing, the
+gloom rolled away and I saw a pillar of light descending from heaven,
+approaching me."
+
+Smith then tells of a vision of a Glorious Being, who informed him that
+none of the warring religious sects had the right version. Then: "The
+light vanished, the personages withdrew and recovering myself, I found
+myself lying on my back gazing up into heaven."
+
+Apropos of this, and of other similar visions which Smith said he had,
+it is interesting to note that there is a theory, founded upon a
+considerable investigation, that Smith was an epileptic.
+
+After his first vision Smith had others, and according to the Mormon
+belief, he finally had revealed to him the Hill Cumorah (twenty-five
+miles southwest of Rochester, N. Y.) where he ultimately found, with the
+aid of the Angel Moroni, the gold plates containing the Book of Mormon,
+together with the Urim and Thummim, the stone spectacles through which
+he read the plates and translated them. After making his translation,
+Smith returned the plates to the angel, but before doing so, showed them
+to eight witnesses who certified to having seen them.
+
+As time went on Smith had more visions until at last the Mormon Church
+was organized in 1830. Revelations continued. The church grew. Branches
+were established in various places, but according to their history, the
+Mormons were persecuted by members of other religious sects and driven
+from place to place. For a time they were in Kirtland, Ohio. Later they
+went to Jackson County, Mo., but their houses were burned and they were
+driven on again. In 1838 "the Lord made known to him (Smith) that Adam
+had dwelt in America, and that the Garden of Eden was located in Jackson
+County, Mo." For a time they were in Nauvoo, Ill., where it seems their
+political activities got them into trouble, and at last Joseph Smith and
+his brother Hiram were shot and killed by a mob, at Carthage, Ill. That
+was in 1844. There were then 10,000 Mormons, over whom Brigham Young
+became the leading power. Soon after this the westward movement began.
+They established various settlements in Iowa, and in 1847 Young and his
+pioneer band of 143 men, 3 women and 2 children, entered the valley of
+Salt Lake, where they immediately set up tents and cabins and began to
+plow and plant, and where they started what the Mormons say was the
+first irrigation system in the United States.
+
+Certainly there were good engineers among them. Their early buildings
+show it--especially the famous Tabernacle in the great square they own
+at the center of the city. The vast arched roof of the Tabernacle is
+supported by wooden beams which were lashed together, no nails having
+been used. This building is not beautiful, but is very interesting. It
+contains among other things a large pipe organ which was, in its day,
+probably the finest in this country, although there are better organs
+elsewhere, now. The Mormon Trails are also recognized in the West as the
+best trails, with the lowest levels, and there are many other evidences
+of unusual engineering and mechanical skill on the part of the early
+settlers, including a curious wooden odometer (now in the museum at Salt
+Lake City) which worked in connection with the wheel of a prairie
+schooner, and which was marvelously accurate.
+
+The revelation as to the practice of polygamy was made to Brigham Young,
+and was promulgated in Utah in 1852, soon becoming a subject of
+contention between the Mormons and the Government. The practice was
+finally suspended by a manifesto issued by President Wilford Woodruff,
+in 1890, and the "History of the Church," written by Edward H. Anderson,
+declares that "a plurality of wives is now neither taught nor
+practised."
+
+Speaking of polygamy I was informed by Prof. Levi Edgar Young, a nephew
+of Brigham Young, a Harvard graduate and an authority on Mormon History,
+that not over 3 per cent. of men claiming membership in the Mormon
+Church ever had practised it. These figures surprised me, as I had
+imagined polygamy to be the rule, rather than the exception. Professor
+Young, however, assured me that a great many leading Mormons had refused
+from the first to accept the practice.
+
+It must be remembered that the day of Brigham Young was not this day. He
+was a powerful, far-seeing and very able man, and it does seem probable
+that he had the idea of founding an Empire in the West. However the
+discovery of gold in '48, flooded the West with settlers and brought a
+preponderance of "gentiles" (as the Mormons call those who are not
+members of their church) into all that country, making the realization
+of Young's dream impossible. What the Mormon Church needed, in those
+early times, was increase--more men to do its work, more women to bear
+children--and viewed entirely from a practical standpoint, polygamy was
+a practice calculated to bring about this end. I met, in Salt Lake City
+men whose fathers had married anywhere from five or six to a dozen
+wives, and so far as sturdiness goes, I may say that I am convinced that
+plural marriages brought about no deterioration in the stock.
+
+I am informed that the membership of the church, to-day, is between
+500,000 and 600,000, and that less than 1 per cent. of the Mormon
+families are at present polygamous. It is not denied that some few
+polygamous marriages have been performed since the issuance of the
+manifesto against the practice, but these have been secret marriages
+without the sanction of the church, and priests who have performed such
+marriages have, when detected, been excommunicated.
+
+I was told in Salt Lake City that, in the cases of some of the older
+Mormons, who had plural wives long before the manifesto, there was
+little doubt that polygamy was still being practised. Some of these men
+are the highest in the church, and it was explained to me that, having
+married their wives in good faith, they proposed to carry out what they
+regard as their obligations to those wives. However, these are old men,
+and with the rise of another generation there can be little doubt that
+these last remnants of polygamy will have been finally stamped out.
+
+The modern young Mormon man or woman seems to be a perfectly normal
+human being with a normal point of view concerning marriage.
+Furthermore, the Mormons believe in education. The school buildings
+scattered everywhere throughout the valley are very fine, and I was
+informed that 80 per cent. of the whole tax income of the State of Utah
+was expended upon education, and that in educational percentages Utah
+compares favorably with Massachusetts.
+
+What effect a broad education might have upon succeeding generations of
+Mormons it is difficult to say. From a literary point of view, the Book
+of Mormon will not bear close scrutiny. Mark Twain described it
+accurately when he said, in "Roughing It":
+
+     The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history,
+     with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious
+     plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his
+     words and phrases the quaint old-fashioned sound and structure of
+     our King James's translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a
+     mongrel--half modern glibness and half ancient simplicity and
+     gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural,
+     but grotesque by contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too
+     modern--which was about every sentence or two--he ladled in a few
+     such Scriptural phrases as "exceeding sore," "and it came to pass,"
+     etc., and made things satisfactory again.... The Mormon Bible is
+     rather stupid and tiresome to read, but there is nothing vicious in
+     its teachings. Its code of morals is unobjectionable--it is
+     "smouched" from the New Testament and no credit given.
+
+[Illustration: We were invited to meet the President of the Mormon
+Church and some members of his family at the Beehive House, his official
+residence]
+
+Certainly there is no need to prove that education is death on dogma.
+That fact has been proving itself as scientific research has come more
+and more into play upon various dogmatic creeds. I was told, however,
+that the Mormon Church schools were liberal; that instead of restricting
+knowledge to conform to the teachings of the church, the church was
+showing a tendency to adapt itself to meet new conditions.
+
+If it is doing that it is cleverer than some other churches.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+THE SMITHS
+
+
+Before going to Salt Lake City I had heard that the Mormons were in
+complete control of politics and business in the State of Utah, and that
+it was their practice to discriminate against "gentiles," making it
+impossible for them to be successful there. I asked a great many
+citizens of Salt Lake City about this, and all the evidence indicated
+that such rumors are without foundation, and that, of recent years,
+Mormons and "gentiles" have worked harmoniously together, socially and
+in business. The Mormons have a strong political machine and pull
+together much as the Roman Catholics do, but the idea that they dominate
+everything in Salt Lake City seems to be a mistaken one. Time and again
+I was assured of this by both Mormons and "gentiles," and an officer of
+the Commercial Club went so far as to draw up figures, supporting the
+statement, as follows:
+
+Of the city's fourteen banks and trust companies, nine are not under
+Mormon control; of five department stores, four are non-Mormon; all
+skyscrapers except one are owned by "gentiles"; likewise four-fifths of
+the best residence property. Furthermore, neither the city government
+nor the public utilities are run by Mormons, nor are the Mayor and the
+President of the Board of Education members of that church.
+
+This is not to say that Mormon business interests are not enormous, but
+only that there has been exaggeration on these points, as on many others
+concerning this sect. The heads of the church are big business men, and
+President Smith is, among other things, a director of the Union Pacific
+Railroad Company.
+
+Among other well-informed men with whom I talked upon this subject was
+the city-editor of a leading newspaper.
+
+"I am not a Mormon," he said, "although my wife is one. You may draw
+your own conclusions as to the Mormon attitude when I tell you that the
+paper on which I work is controlled by them, yet that, as it happens
+just now, I haven't a Mormon reporter on my staff. Here and there there
+may be some old hard-shell Mormon who won't employ any one that isn't a
+member of the church, but cases of that kind are as rare among Mormons
+as among other religious sects."
+
+Every business man with whom I talked seemed anxious to impress me with
+this fact, that I might pass it on in print.
+
+"For heaven's sake," said one impassioned citizen, "tell people that we
+raise something out here besides Mormons and hell!"
+
+One of the most level-headed men I met in Salt Lake City was a Mormon,
+though not orthodox. His position with regard to the church was
+precisely the same as that of a man who has been brought up in any other
+church, but who, as he grows older, cannot accept the creed in its
+entirety. His attitude as to the Mormon Bible was one of honest doubt.
+In short, he was an agnostic, and as such talked interestingly.
+
+"Of course," he said, "out here we are as used to the Mormon religion
+and to the idea that some men have a number of wives, as you are to the
+idea that men have only one wife. It doesn't seem strange to us. I can't
+adjust my mind to the fact that it is strange, and I only become
+conscious of it when I go to other parts of the country and find that,
+when people know I'm a Mormon, they become very curious, and want me to
+tell them all about the Mormons and polygamy.
+
+"Now, in trying to understand the Mormons, the first thing to remember
+is that they are human beings, with the same set of virtues and failings
+and feelings as other human beings. There are some who are dogmatically
+religious; some with whom marriage--even plural marriage--is just as
+pure and spiritual a thing as it is with any other people in the world.
+On the other hand, some Mormons, like some members of other sects, have
+doubtless had lusts. The family life of some Mormons is very beautiful,
+and as smoking, drinking and other dissipations are forbidden, orthodox
+Mormon men lead very clean lives. In this they are upheld by our women,
+for many Mormon women will not marry a man excepting in our Temple, and
+no man who has broken the rules of the church may be married there.
+
+"Among the younger generation of Mormons you will see the same general
+line of characteristics as among young people anywhere. Some of them
+grow up into strict Mormons, while others--particularly some of the sons
+of rich Mormons--are what you might call 'sports.' Human nature is no
+different in Utah than elsewhere.
+
+"My father had several wives and I had a great number of brothers and
+sisters. We didn't live like one big family, and the half-brothers and
+half-sisters did not feel towards each other as real brothers and
+sisters do. When my father was a very old man he married a young wife,
+and we felt about it just as any other sons and daughters would at
+seeing their father do such a thing. We felt it was a mistake, and that
+it was not just to us, for father had not many more years to live, and
+it appeared that on his death we might have his young wife and her
+family to look after.
+
+"My views are such that in bringing up my own children I have not had
+them baptized as Mormons at the age of eight, according to the custom of
+the church. This has grieved my people, but I cannot help it. I am
+bringing my children up to fear God and lead clean lives, but I do not
+think I have the right to force them into any church, and I propose to
+leave the matter of joining or not joining to their own discretion,
+later on."
+
+Another Mormon, this one orthodox, and a cultivated man, told me he
+thought that in most cases the old polygamous marriages were entered
+into with a spirit of real religious fervor.
+
+"My father married two wives," he said. "He loved my mother, who was his
+first wife, very dearly, and they are as fine and contented a couple as
+you ever saw. But when the revelation as to polygamy was made, father
+took a second wife because he believed it to be his duty to do so."
+
+"How did your mother feel about it?" I asked.
+
+"I have no doubt," said he, "that it hurt mother terribly, but she was
+submissive because she believed it was right. And later, when the
+manifesto against polygamy was issued, it hurt father's second wife,
+when he had to give her up, for he had two children by her. However, he
+obeyed implicitly the law of the church, supporting his second wife and
+her children, but living with my mother."
+
+Later this gentleman took me to call at the home of this old couple. The
+husband, more than eighty years of age, was a professional man with a
+degree from a large eastern university. He was a gentleman of the old
+school, very fine, dignified, and gracious, and there was an air about
+him which somehow made me think of a sturdy, straight old tree. As for
+his wife she was one of the two most adorable old ladies I have ever
+met.
+
+Very simply she told me of the early days. Her parents had been
+well-to-do Pennsylvania Dutch and had left a prosperous home in the East
+and come out to the West, not to better themselves, but because of their
+religion. (One should always remember that, in thinking of the Mormons:
+whatever may have been the rights and wrongs of their religion, they
+have believed in it and suffered for it.) She, herself, was born in
+1847, in a prairie schooner, on the banks of the Missouri River, and in
+that vehicle she was carried across the plains and through the passes,
+to where Salt Lake City was then in the first year of its settlement.
+Some families were still living in tents when she was a little girl, but
+log cabins were springing up. Behind her house, I was shown, later, the
+cabin--now used as a lumber shed--in which she dwelt as a child.
+
+Fancy the fascination that there was in hearing that old lady tell, in
+her simple way, the story of the early Mormon settlement. For all her
+gentleness and the low voice in which she spoke, the tale was an epic in
+which she herself had figured. She was not merely the daughter of a
+pioneer, and the wife of one; she was a pioneer herself. She had seen it
+all, from the beginning. How much she had seen, how much she had
+endured, how much she had known of happiness and sorrow! And now, in her
+old age, she had a nature like a distillation made of everything there
+is in life, and whatever bitterness there may have been in life for her
+had gone, and left her altogether lovable and altogether sweet.
+
+I did not wish to leave her house, and when I did, and when she said she
+hoped that I would come again, I was conscious of a lump in my throat. I
+do not expect you to understand it, for I do not, quite, myself. But
+there it was--that kind of lump which, once in a long time, will rise up
+in one's throat when one sees a very lovely, very happy child.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+When our friend Professor Young asked us whether we had met President
+Joseph F. Smith, we told him of our unfortunate encounter with that
+gentleman, in the Lion House, a day or two before. This information led
+to activities on the part of the Professor, which in turn led to our
+being invited, on the day of our departure, to meet the President and
+some members of his family at the Beehive House--the official residence
+of the head of the church.
+
+The Beehive House is a large old-fashioned mansion with the kind of
+pillared front so often seen in the architecture of the South. Its
+furnishings are, like the house itself, old-fashioned, homelike, and
+unostentatious.
+
+I have forgotten who let us in, but I have no recollection of a maid,
+and I rather think the door was opened by the President himself. At all
+events we had no sooner entered than we met him, in the hall. His manner
+had changed. He was most hospitable, and walked through several rooms
+with us, showing us some plaster casts and paintings, the work of Mormon
+artists. Most of the paintings were extremely ordinary, but the work
+of one young sculptor was remarkable, and as the story of him is
+remarkable as well, I wish to mention him here.
+
+[Illustration: The Lion House--a large adobe building in which formerly
+resided the rank and file of Brigham Young's wives]
+
+He is a boy named Arvard Fairbanks, a grandson of Mormon pioneers, on
+both sides, and he is not yet twenty years of age. At twelve he started
+modeling animals from life. At thirteen he took a scholarship in the Art
+Students' League, in New York, and exhibited at the National Academy of
+Design. At fourteen he took another scholarship and also got an art
+school into trouble with the sometimes rather silly Gerry Society, for
+permitting a child to model from the nude. Work done by this boy at the
+age of fifteen is nothing short of amazing. I have never seen such
+finished things from the hand of a youth. His subjects--Indians,
+buffalo, pumas, etc.--show splendid observation and understanding, and
+are full of the feeling of the West. And if the West is not very proud
+of him some day, I shall be surprised.
+
+After showing us these things, and talking upon general subjects for a
+time, the President went to the foot of the stairs and called:
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+Whereupon a woman's voice answered, from above, and a moment later Mrs.
+Smith--one of the Mrs. Smiths--appeared. She was most cordial and
+kindly--a pleasant, motherly sort of woman who made you feel that she
+was always in good spirits.
+
+After we had enjoyed a pleasant little talk with her, one of her sons
+and his wife came in: he a strong young farmer, she pretty, plump and
+rosy. They had with them their little girl, who played about upon the
+floor. Later appeared President Penrose (there are several Presidents in
+the Mormon Church, but President Smith is the leader) who has red cheeks
+and brown hair in spite of the fact that he is eighty-two years old, and
+considerably married.
+
+Here in the midst of this intimate family group I kept wishing that, in
+some way, the matter of polygamy might be mentioned. By this time I had
+heard so many Mormons talk about it freely that I understood the topic
+was not taboo; still, in the presence of Mrs. Smith I hardly knew how to
+begin, or indeed, whether it was tactful to begin--although I had been
+informed in advance that I might ask questions.
+
+But how to ask? I couldn't very well say to this pleasant lady: "How do
+you like being one of five or six wives, and how do you think the others
+like it?" And as for: "How do you like being married?" that hardly
+expressed the question that was in my mind--besides which, it was
+plainly evident that the lady was entirely content with her lot.
+
+It did not seem proper to inquire of my hostess: "How can you be
+content?" That much my social instinct told me. What, then, could I ask?
+
+At last the baby granddaughter gave me a happy thought. "Certainly," I
+said to myself, "it cannot be bad form to make polite inquiries about
+the family of any gentleman."
+
+I tried to think how I might best ask the President the question. "Have
+you any children?" would not do, because there was his son, right in the
+room, and other sons and daughters had been referred to in the course of
+conversation. Finally, as time was getting short, I determined to put it
+bluntly.
+
+"How many children and grandchildren have you?" I asked President Smith.
+
+He was not in the least annoyed by the inquiry; only a little bit
+perplexed.
+
+"Let's see," he answered ruminatively, fingering his long beard, and
+looking at the ceiling. "I don't remember exactly--but over a hundred."
+
+"Why!" put in Mrs. Smith, proudly, "you have a lot over a hundred."
+Then, to me, she explained: "I am the mother of eleven, and I have had
+thirty-two grandchildren in the last twelve years. There is forty-three,
+right there."
+
+"Oh, you surely have a hundred and ten, father," said young Smith.
+
+"Perhaps, perhaps," returned the modern Abraham, contentedly.
+
+"I beat you, though!" laughed President Penrose.
+
+"I don't know about that," interposed young Smith, sticking up for the
+family. "If father would count up I think you'd find he was ahead."
+
+"How many have you?" President Smith inquired of his coadjutor.
+
+President Penrose rubbed his hands and beamed with satisfaction.
+
+"A hundred and twenty-odd," he said.
+
+After that there was no gainsaying him. He was supreme. Even Mrs. Smith
+admitted it.
+
+"Yes," she said, smiling and shaking a playful finger at him, "you're
+ahead just now; but remember, you're older than we are. You just give us
+time!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+PASSING PICTURES
+
+
+As our train crossed the Great Salt Lake the farther shores were
+glistening in a golden haze, half real, half mirage, like the shores of
+Paestum as you see them from the monastery at Amalfi on a sunny day.
+Beyond the lake a portion of the desert was glazed with a curious thin
+film of water--evidently overflow--in which the forms of stony hills at
+the margin of the waste were reflected so clearly that the eye could not
+determine the exact point of meeting between cliff and plain. Farther
+out in the desert there was no water, and as we left the hills behind,
+the world became a great white arid reach, flat as only moist sand can
+be flat, and tragic in its desolation. For a time nothing, literally,
+was visible but sky and desert, save for a line of telegraph poles,
+rising forlornly beside the right-of-way.
+
+I found the desert impressive, but my companion, whose luncheon had not
+agreed with him, declared that it was not up to specifications.
+
+"Any one who is familiar with Frederick Remington's drawings," he said,
+"knows that there must be skeletons and buffalo skulls stuck around on
+deserts."
+
+I was about to explain that the Western Pacific was a new railroad and
+that probably they had not yet found time to do their landscape
+gardening along the line, when, far ahead, I caught sight of a dark dot
+on the sand. I kept my eye on it. As our train overtook it, it began to
+assume form, and at last I saw that it was actually a prairie schooner.
+Presently we passed it. It was moving slowly along, a few hundred yards
+from the track. The horses were walking; their heads were down and they
+looked tired. The man who was driving was the only human being visible;
+he was hunched over, and when the train went by, he never so much as
+turned his head.
+
+The picture was perfect. Even my companion admitted that, and ceased to
+demand skulls and skeletons. And when, two or three hours later, after
+having crossed the desert and worked our way into the hills, we saw a
+full-fledged cowboy on a pinto pony, we felt that the Western Pacific
+railroad was complete in its theatrical accessories.
+
+The cowboy did his best to give us Western color. When he saw the train
+coming, he spurred up his pony, and waving a lasso, set out in pursuit
+of an innocent old milch cow, which was grazing nearby. That she was no
+range animal was evident. Her sleek condition and her calm demeanor
+showed that she was fully accustomed to the refined surroundings of the
+stable. As he came at her she gazed in horrified amazement, quite as
+some fat, dignified old lady might gaze at a bad little boy, running at
+her with a pea-shooter. Then, in bovine alarm, she turned and lumbered
+heavily away. The cowboy charged and cut her off, waving his rope and
+yelling. However, no capture was made. As soon as the train had passed
+the cowboy desisted, and poor old bossy was allowed to settle down again
+to comfortable grazing.
+
+After a good dinner in one of those admirable dining cars one always
+finds on western roads, and a good smoke, my companion and I were ready
+for bed. But as we were about to retire, a fellow-passenger with whom we
+had been talking, asked, "Aren't you going to sit up for Elko?"
+
+"What is there at Elko?" inquired my companion, with a yawn.
+
+"Oh," said the other, "there's a little of the local color of Nevada
+there. You had better wait."
+
+"I don't believe we'll be able to see anything," I put in, glancing out
+at the black night.
+
+"It is something you couldn't see by daylight," said the stranger.
+
+That made us curious, so we sat up.
+
+As the train slowed for Elko, and we went to get our overcoats, we
+observed that one passenger, a woman, was making ready to get off. We
+had noticed her during the day--a stalwart woman of thirty-three or
+four, perhaps, who, we judged, had once been very handsome, though she
+now looked faded. Her hair was a dull red, and her complexion was of
+that milky whiteness which so often accompanies red hair. Her eyes were
+green, cold and expressionless, and her mouth, though well formed,
+sagged at the corners, giving her a discontented and rather hard look. I
+remember that we wondered what manner of woman she was, and that we
+could not decide.
+
+The train stopped, and with our acquaintance of the car, my companion
+and I alighted. It was a long train, and our sleeper, which was near the
+rear, came to a standstill some distance short of the station building,
+so that the part of the platform to which we stepped was without light.
+Beyond the station we saw several buildings looming like black shadows,
+but that was all; we could make out nothing of the town.
+
+"I don't see much here," I remarked to the man who had suggested sitting
+up.
+
+"Come on," he said, moving back through the blackness, towards the end
+of the train.
+
+As I turned to follow him I saw the red-haired woman step down from the
+car and hand her suitcase to a man who had been awaiting her; they stood
+for a moment in conversation; as I moved away I heard their low voices.
+
+Reaching the last car our guide descended to the track and crossed to
+the other side. We followed. My first glimpse of what lay beyond gave me
+the impression that a large railroad yard was spread out before me, its
+myriad switch-lights glowing red through the black night. But as my eyes
+became accustomed to the darkness, I saw that here was not a maze of
+tracks, but a maze of houses, and that the lights were not those of
+switches, but of windows and front doors: night signs of the traffic to
+which the houses were dedicated.
+
+[Illustration: The Cliff House has a Sorrento setting and hectic
+turkey-trotting nights]
+
+"There," said our acquaintance. "A few years back you'd have seen this
+in almost any town out here, but things are changing; I don't know
+another place on this whole line that shows off its red light district
+the way Elko does."
+
+After looking for a time at the sinister lights, we re-crossed the
+railroad track. As we stepped up to the platform, two figures coming in
+the opposite direction rounded the rear car and, crossing the rails,
+moved away towards the illuminated region. I heard their voices; they
+were the red haired woman and the man who had met her at the train.
+
+Was she a new arrival? I think not, for she seemed to know the man, and
+she had, somehow, the air of getting home. Was she an "inmate" of one of
+the establishments? Again I think not, for, with her look of hardness,
+there was also one of capability, and more than any one thing it is
+laziness and lack of capability which cause sane women to give up
+freedom for such "homes." No; I think the woman from the train was a
+proprietor who had been away on a vacation, or perhaps a "business
+trip."
+
+Suppose that to be true. Suppose that she had been away for several
+weeks. What was her feeling at seeing, again, the crimson beacon in her
+own window? What must it be like to get home, when home is such a
+place? Could one's mental attitude become so warped that one might
+actually look forward to returning--to being greeted by the "family"?
+Could it be that, at sight of that red light, flaring over there across
+the tracks, one might heave a happy sigh and say to oneself: "Ah! Home
+again at last! There's no place like home"--?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One thing the Western Pacific Railroad does that every railroad should
+do. It publishes a pamphlet, containing a relief map of its system, and
+a paragraph or two about every station on the line, giving the history
+of the place (if it has any), telling the altitude, the distance from
+terminal points, and how the town got its name.
+
+From this pamphlet I judge that some one who had to do with the building
+of the Western Pacific Railroad, or at least with the naming of stations
+on the line, possessed a pleasantly catholic literary taste. Gaskell,
+Nevada, one stopping place, is named for the author of "Cranford";
+Bronte, in the same State, for Charlotte Bronte; Poe, in California, for
+Edgar Allan Poe; Twain for Mark Twain; Harte for Bret Harte, and Mabie
+for Hamilton Wright Mabie. Other stations are named for British Field
+Marshals, German scientists, American politicians and financiers, and
+for old settlers, ranches, and landmarks.
+
+Had there not been washouts on the line shortly before we journeyed
+over it, I might not have known so much about this little pamphlet, but
+during the night, when I could not sleep because of the violent rocking
+of the car, I read it with great care. Thus it happened that when,
+towards morning, we stopped, and I raised my curtain to find the ground
+covered with a blanket of snow, I was able to establish myself as being
+in the Sierras, somewhere in the region of the Beckwith Pass--which, by
+the way, is by two thousand feet, the lowest pass used by any railroad
+entering the State of California.
+
+Some time before dawn the roadbed became solid and I slept until
+summoned by my companion to see the canyon of the Feather River.
+
+Dressing hurriedly, I joined him at the window on the other side of the
+car (I have observed that, almost invariably, that is where the scenery
+is), and looked down into what I still remember as the most beautiful
+canyon I have ever seen.
+
+The last time I had looked out it had been winter, yet here, within the
+space of a few hours, had come the spring. It gave me the feeling of a
+Rip Van Winkle: I had slept and a whole season had passed. Our train was
+winding along a serpentine shelf nicked into the lofty walls of a gorge
+at the bottom of which rushed a mad stream all green and foamy. Above,
+the mountains were covered with tall pines, their straight trunks
+reaching heavenward like the slender columns of a Gothic cathedral, the
+roof of which was made of low-hung, stone-gray cloud--a cathedral
+decked as for the Easter season, its aisles and altars abloom with green
+leaves, and blossoms purple and white.
+
+Throughout the hundred miles for which we followed the windings of the
+Feather River Canyon, our eyes hardly left the window. Now we would crash
+through a short, black tunnel, emerging to find still greater loveliness
+where we had thought no greater loveliness could be; now we would
+traverse a spindly bridge which quickly changed the view (and us) to the
+other side of the car. Now we would pass the intake of a power plant;
+next we would come upon the plant itself, a monumental pile, looking
+like some Rhenish castle which had slipped down from a peak and settled
+comfortably beside the stream.
+
+Once the flagman who dropped off when the train stopped, brought us back
+some souvenirs: a little pink lizard which, according to its captor,
+suited itself to a vogue of the moment with the name of Salamander; and
+a piece of glistening quartz which he designated "fools' gold." And
+presently, when the train was under way again, we saw, far down at the
+water's edge, the "fools" themselves in search of gold--two old
+gray-bearded placer-miners with their pans.
+
+At last the walls of the canyon began to melt away, spreading apart and
+drifting down into the gentle slope of a green valley starred with
+golden poppies. Spring had turned to summer--a summer almost tropical,
+for, at Sacramento, early in the afternoon, we saw open street-cars,
+their seats ranged back-to-back and facing outwards, like those of an
+Irish jaunting-car, running through an avenue lined with a double row of
+palms, beneath which girls were coming home from school bareheaded and
+in linen sailor suits.
+
+Imagine leaving New York on a snowy Christmas morning, and arriving that
+same afternoon in Buffalo, to find them celebrating Independence Day,
+and you will get the sense of that transition. We had passed from furs
+to shirtsleeves in a morning.
+
+Late that afternoon, we left the valley and began to thread our way
+among the Coast Range hills--green velvet hills, soft, round and
+voluptuous, like the "Paps of Kerry." We were still amongst them when
+the sun went down, and it was night when we arrived at the terminal in
+Oakland.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+SAN FRANCISCO
+
+
+Leaving the train in Oakland, one is reminded of Hoboken or Jersey City
+in the days before the Hudson Tubes were built. There is the train shed,
+the throng headed for the ferry, the baggage trucks, and the ferryboat
+itself, like a New York ferryboat down to its very smell. Likewise the
+fresh salt wind that blows into your face as you stand at the front of
+the boat, in crossing San Francisco Bay, is like a spring or summer wind
+in New York Harbor. So, if you cross at night, you have only the lights
+to tell you that you are not indeed arriving in New York.
+
+The ferry is three miles wide. There are no skyscrapers, with lighted
+windows, looming overhead, as they loom over the Hudson. To the right
+the myriad lamps of Oakland, Berkeley and Alameda are distributed along
+the shore, electric trains dashing in front of them like comets; and
+straight ahead lies San Francisco--a fallen fragment of the Milky Way,
+draped over a succession of receding hills.
+
+Crossing the ferry I tried to remember things I had been told of this
+city of my dreams, and to imagine what it would be like. Of course I had
+been warned time and again not to refer to it as "'Frisco," and not to
+speak of the Earthquake, but only of the Fire. I had those two points
+well in mind, but there were others out of which I endeavored to
+construct an imaginary town.
+
+San Francisco was, as I pictured it in advance, a city of gaiety, gold
+money, twenty-five cent drinks, flowers, Chinamen, hospitality, night
+restaurants, mysterious private dining rooms, the Bohemian Club,
+openhearted men and unrivaled women--superb, majestic, handsomely
+upholstered, six-cylinder self-starting blondes, with all improvements,
+including high-tension double ignition, Prestolite lamps, and four
+speeds forward but no reverse.
+
+That is the way I pictured San Francisco, and that, with some slight
+reservations, is the way I found it.
+
+Several times in the course of these chapters, I have been conscious of
+an effort to say something agreeable about this city or that, but in the
+case of San Francisco, I find it necessary to restrain, rather than
+force my appreciation, lest I be charged with making noises like a
+Native Son.
+
+The Native Sons of the Golden West is a large and semi-secret
+organization of men born in California who, I was informed, are banded
+together to help one another and the State. Its activities are largely
+political and vocal.
+
+It was a Native Son who, when asked by an Englishman, visiting the
+United States for the first time, to name the Seven Wonders of America,
+replied: "Santa Barbara, Coronado, Del Monte, San Francisco, Yosemite,
+Lake Tahoe and Mount Shasta."
+
+"But," objected the visitor, "all those places are in California, aren't
+they?"
+
+"Of _course_ they're in California!" cried the Native Son. "Where else
+would they be?"
+
+That is the point of view of the Native Son and the native Californian
+in general. Meeting Californians outside their State, I have been
+inclined to think them boasters, but now, after a visit to California, I
+have come to understand that they are nothing of the kind, but are, upon
+the contrary, adherents of cold truth. They want to tell the truth about
+their State, they try to tell it, and if they do not succeed it is only
+because they lack the power of expression. When it comes to California
+everybody does--a fact which I shall now assist in demonstrating
+further.
+
+Take, for instance, the climate. The exact nature of the California
+climate had been a puzzle to me. I had been in the habit of considering
+certain parts of the country as suited for winter residence, and certain
+other parts for summer; but, in the East, when I asked people about
+California, I found some who advised it as a winter substitute for
+Florida, and others who recommended it as a summer substitute for Maine.
+
+Therefore, on reaching San Francisco, I took pains to cross-examine
+natives as to what they meant by "climate."
+
+[Illustration: The salt-water pool, Olympic Club, San Francisco]
+
+As I did not visit Southern California I shall leave the climate of that
+section to the residents, who are not only willing to describe it, but
+who, from all accounts, can come as near doing it adequately as anybody
+can. But in San Francisco and the surrounding country I think I know
+what climate means.
+
+There are two seasons: spring, beginning about November and running on
+into April; autumn, beginning in April and filling out the remaining six
+months. Winter and summer are simply left out. There is no great cold
+(snow has fallen but six times in the history of the city) and no great
+heat (84 degrees was the highest temperature registered during an
+unusual "hot spell" which occurred just before our visit). It is,
+however, a celebrated peculiarity of the San Francisco climate that
+between shade and sun there is a difference so great as to make light
+winter clothing comfortable on one side of the street, and summer
+clothing on the other. The most convenient clothing, upon the whole, I
+found to be of medium weight, and as soon as the sun had set I sometimes
+felt the need of a light overcoat.
+
+One of the finest things about the California weather is its absolute
+reliability. In the rainy season of spring, rain is expected and people
+go prepared for it; but with the arrival of the sunny season, the rain
+is really over, and thereafter you need not fear for your straw hat or
+your millinery, as the case may be.
+
+Small wonder that the Californian loves to talk about his climate. He
+loves to discuss it for the same reason the New Yorker loves to discuss
+money: because, with him, it is the fundamental thing. All through the
+West, but particularly on the Pacific Coast, men and women alike lead
+outdoor lives, compared with which the outdoor lives of Easterners are
+labored and pathetic. The man or woman in California who does not know
+what it is to ride and camp and shoot is an anomaly. Apropos of this
+love of outdoors, I am reminded that the head of a large department
+store informed me that, in San Francisco, rainy days bring out the
+largest shopping crowds, because people like to spend the sunny ones in
+the open. Also, I noticed for myself, that small shopkeepers think so
+much of the climate that in many instances they cannot bear to bar it
+out, even at night, but have permanent screen fronts in their stores.
+
+All the year round, flowers are for sale at stands on corners, in the
+San Francisco streets, and if you think we have no _genre_ in America,
+if you think there is nothing in this country to compare with your
+memories of picturesque little scenes in Europe--scenes involving such
+things as the dog-drawn wagons of Belgium; Dutch girls in wooden shoes,
+bending at the waist to scrub a sidewalk; embroidered peasants at a
+Breton pardon; proud beggars at an Andalusian railway station;
+mysterious hooded Arabs at Gibraltar; street singers in Naples; flower
+girls in the costume of the _campagna_, at the Spanish Steps in Rome--if
+you think we cannot match such bits of color, then you should see the
+flower stands of San Francisco upon some holiday, when Chinese girls
+are bargaining for blooms.
+
+But I am talking only of this one part of California. When one considers
+the whole State, one is forced to admit that it is a natural
+wonder-place. It is everything. In its ore-filled mountains it is
+Alaska; to the south it is South America; I have looked out of a train
+window and seen a perfect English park, only to realize suddenly that it
+had not been made by gardeners, but was the sublimated landscape
+gardening which Nature gave to this state of states. I have eaten
+Parisian meals in San Francisco and drunk splendid wines, and afterwards
+I have been told that our viands and beverages had, without exception,
+been produced in California--unless one counts the gin in the cocktail
+which preceded dinner. But that is only part of it. With her hills San
+Francisco is Rome; with her harbor she is Naples; with her hotels she is
+New York. But with her clubs and her people she is San Francisco--which,
+to my mind, comes near being the apotheosis of praise.
+
+So far as I know American cities San Francisco stands out amongst them
+like some beautiful, fascinating creature who comes suddenly into a
+roomful of mediocrities. She is radiant, she has charm and allure, those
+qualities which are gifts of the gods, and which, though we recognize
+them instantly when we meet them, we are unable to describe.
+
+I have not forgotten the charm of Detroit, nor the stupendousness of
+Chicago, but--there is only one Paris and only one San Francisco. San
+Francisco does not look at all like Paris, and while it has a large
+foreign population the people one meets are, for the most part,
+pure-blooded Americans, yet all the time I was there, I found myself
+thinking of the place as a city that was somehow foreign. It is full of
+that splendid vigor which one learns to expect of young American cities;
+yet it is full of something else--something Latin. The outlook upon life
+even of its most American inhabitants is touched with a quality that is
+different. The climate works its will upon them as climate does on
+people everywhere. Here it makes them lively and spontaneous. They are
+able to do more (including more sitting up at night) than people do in
+New York, and it seems to tell upon them less. They love good times and,
+again owing to the climate, they are able to have them out of doors.
+
+The story of the Portola fete, as told me by a San Franciscan, nicely
+illustrates that, and also shows the San Francisco point of view.
+
+"In 1907," he informed me, "we decided to put over a big outdoor New
+Year's fete, with dancing in the streets, the way they have it in Paris
+on the Fourteenth of July. But at the last minute it rained and spoiled
+the outdoor part of the fun. Once in a while, you see, that can happen
+even in San Francisco.
+
+"Everybody agreed that we ought to have a regular established festival,
+and as we didn't want to have it spoiled a second time, we hunted up the
+weather records and found that in the history of the city there had
+never been rain between October seventeenth and twenty-ninth. That
+established the time for our fete; the next thing was to discover an
+excuse for it. That was not so easy. After digging through a lot of
+history we found that Don Caspar de Portola discovered San Francisco Bay
+October twenty-second, 1679--or maybe it was 1769--that doesn't matter.
+Nobody had ever heard of Portola until then, but now we have dragged him
+out of oblivion and made quite a boy of him, all as an excuse to have a
+good time."
+
+"Then you don't celebrate New Year's out here?" I asked.
+
+"Don't we though!" he exclaimed. "You ought to be here for our New
+Year's fete. It is one of the most spontaneous shows of the kind you'll
+see anywhere. It's not a tough orgy such as you have on Broadway every
+New Year's Eve, with a lot of drunks sitting around in restaurants under
+signs saying 'Champagne Only'--I've seen that. We just have a lot of
+real fun, mostly in the streets.
+
+"One thing you can count on out here. We celebrate everything that can
+be celebrated, and the beauty of a lot of our good times is that they
+have a way of just breaking loose instead of being cooked-up in advance.
+It has often happened that on Christmas Eve some great singer or
+musician would appear in the streets and sing or play for the crowds. A
+hundred thousand people heard Tetrazzini when she did that four years
+ago. Bispham and a lot of other big singers have done the same thing,
+and three years ago, on Christmas Eve, Kubelik played for the crowds in
+the streets. Somehow I think that musicians and artists of all kinds
+have a warm feeling for San Francisco, and want to show us that they
+have."
+
+There can be no doubt that that is true. Many artists have inhabited San
+Francisco, and the city has always been beloved by them; especially, it
+sometimes seems, by the writing group. Mark Twain records that on his
+arrival he "fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the
+Union," and countless other authors, from Stevenson down, have paid
+their tribute.
+
+As might be expected of a country so palpitantly beautiful and alive,
+California has produced many artists in literature and the other
+branches, and has developed many others who, having had the misfortune
+to be born elsewhere, possessed, at least, the good judgment to move to
+California while still in the formative period.
+
+Sitting around a table in a cafe, one night, with a painter, a novelist
+and a newspaper man, I set them all to making lists, from memory, of
+persons following the arts, who may be classified as Californians by
+birth or long residence.
+
+The four most prominent painters listed were Arthur F. Mathews, Charles
+Rollo Peters, Charles J. Dickman and Francis McComas, all of them men
+standing very high in American art. Among sculptors were mentioned
+Robert Aitken, Arthur Putnam, Haig Patigian and Douglas Tilden. Of
+writers there is a deluge. Besides Mark Twain and Stevenson, the names
+of Bret Harte, Frank Norris, and Joaquin Miller are, of course, historic
+in connection with the State. Among living writers born in California
+were listed Gertrude Atherton, Jack London, Lloyd Osbourne, Austin
+Strong, Ernest Peixotto and Kathleen Norris; while among those born
+elsewhere who have migrated to California, were set down the names of
+Harry Leon Wilson, Stewart Edward White, James Hopper, Mary Austin,
+Grace MacGowan Cooke, Alice MacGowan, Rufus Steele and Bertha Runkle.
+Still another group of writers who do not now reside in California are,
+nevertheless, associated with the State because of having lived there in
+the past. Among these are Wallace and Will Irwin, Gelett Burgess,
+Eleanor Gates, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Edwin Markham, George Sterling,
+Richard Tully, Jack Hines and Arno Dosch.
+
+At this juncture it occurs to me that, quite regardless of the truth, I
+had better say that I have not set down these names according to any
+theories of mine about the order of their importance, but that I have
+copied them off as they came to me on lists made by other persons, who
+shall be sheltered to the last by anonymity.
+
+All the names so far mentioned were furnished by the painter and the
+novelist. The newspaper man kept me waiting a long time for his list. At
+last he gave it to me, and lo! Harrison Fisher's name led all the rest.
+Henry Raliegh and Rae Irvin, illustrators, were also listed, but the
+formidable California showing came with the category of cartoonists and
+"comic artists" employed on New York newspapers. Of these the following
+were set down as products of the Golden State: Bud Fisher, Igoe, and
+James Swinnerton of the "American"; Tom McNamara, Hal Cauffman, George
+Harriman, Hershfield, and T. A. Dorgan ("Tad") of the "Journal";
+Goldberg of the "Evening Mail"; R. E. Edgren of the "World"; Robert
+Carter of the "Sun"; and Ripley of the "Globe." The late Homer Davenport
+of the "American" also came to New York from San Francisco. This list,
+covering as it does all but a handful of the cartoonists and "funny men"
+of the New York papers, seems to me hardly less remarkable than this
+further list of "artists" of another variety who trace back to
+California: James J. Corbett, Jim Jeffries, Joe Choynski, Jimmy Britt,
+Abe Attell, Willie Ritchie, Eddie Hanlon and Frankie Neil; with Jack
+Johnson and Stanley Ketchell added for the reason that, although not
+actual native products, they "developed" in California.
+
+Perhaps after having given California her artistic due in this handsome
+manner, and being, myself, well out of the State, this may be the best
+time to touch upon a sensitive point. As the reader may have observed, I
+always try to evade responsibility when playing with fire, and if one
+does that with fire, it becomes all the more necessary to observe the
+same rule in the case of earthquakes.
+
+In this instance the best way out of it for me seems to be to put the
+blame on Baedeker, who, in his little red book, declares that
+"earthquakes occur occasionally in San Francisco, but have seldom been
+destructive," after which he recites that in 1906 "a severe earthquake
+lasting about a minute" visited the city, that "the City Hall became a
+mass of ruins but, on the whole, few of the more solid structures were
+seriously injured."
+
+San Francisco is notoriously sensitive upon this subject, and her
+sensitiveness is not difficult to understand. For one thing,
+earthquakes, interesting though they may be as demonstrations of the
+power of Nature, are not generally considered a profitable form of
+advertising for a city, although, curiously enough, they seem, like
+volcanic eruptions, to visit spots of the greatest natural beauty. For
+another thing San Francisco feels that "earthquake" is really a misnomer
+for her disaster, and that this fact is not generally understood in such
+remote and ill-informed localities as, for instance, the Island of
+Manhattan.
+
+There is not a little justice in this contention. However the city may
+have been "shaken down" in the past, by corrupt politicians, the quake
+did no such thing. All the damage done by the actual trembling of the
+ground might have been repaired at a cost of a few millions, had not the
+quake started the fire and at the same time destroyed the means of
+fighting it. Baedeker, always conservative, estimates the fire loss at
+three hundred and fifty millions.
+
+Furthermore, it is contended in San Francisco that the city is not
+actually in the earthquake belt. Scientists have examined the
+earthquake's fault-line, and have declared that it comes down the coast
+to a point some miles north of the city, where it obligingly heads out
+to sea, passing around San Francisco, and coming ashore again far to the
+south.
+
+While, to my mind, this seems to indicate an extraordinary degree of
+good-nature on the part of an earthquake, I have come, through a
+negative course of reasoning, to accept it as true. For it so happens
+that I have discussed literature with a considerable number of
+scientific men, and I cannot but conclude from the experience that they
+must know an enormous amount about other matters. Therefore, on
+earthquakes, I am bound entirely by their decisions, and I believe that
+all well-ordered earthquakes will be so bound, and that the only chance
+of future trouble from this source, in San Francisco, might arise
+through a visit from some irresponsible, renegade quake which was not a
+member of the regular organization.
+
+As to San Francisco's "touchiness" upon the subject there is this much
+more to be said. A cow is rumored to have kicked over a lamp and started
+the Chicago Fire. An earthquake kicked over a building and started the
+San Francisco Fire. People do not refer to the Chicago Fire as the
+"Cow." Why then should they refer to the San Francisco Fire as the
+"Earthquake"? That is the way they reason at the Golden Gate. But
+however that may be, the important fact is this: the Chicago Fire taught
+that city a lesson. When Chicago was rebuilt in brick and stone, instead
+of wood, another cow could kick over another lamp without endangering
+the whole town. The same story is repeated in San Francisco. The city
+has been magnificently reconstructed. Another quake might kick over
+another building, but the city would not go as it did before, because,
+aside from the fact that the main part of it is now unburnable, as
+nearly as that may be said of any group of buildings, the most elaborate
+system of fire-protection has been installed, so that if, in future,
+water connections are broken at one point, or two points, or several
+points, there will still be plenty of water from other sources.
+
+As an outsider, in love with San Francisco, who has yet had the temerity
+to mention the forbidden word, I may perhaps venture a little farther
+and suggest that it is time for sensitiveness over the word "earthquake"
+to cease.
+
+Let us use what word we like: the fact remains that the disaster brought
+out magnificent qualities in San Francisco's people; they were
+victorious over it; they have fortified themselves against a repetition
+of it; they transformed catastrophe into opportunity. Already, I think,
+many San Franciscans understand that the cataclysm was not an unmixed
+evil, and I believe that, strange though it may seem, there will
+presently come a time when, for all their half-melancholy "before the
+fire" talk, they will admit that on the whole it was a good thing. For
+it is granted to but few cities and few men to really begin life anew.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+"BEFORE THE FIRE"
+
+
+San Fransiscans love to show their city off. Nevertheless they take a
+curious delight in countering against the enthusiasm of the alien with a
+solemn wag of the head and the invariable:
+
+                              {seen   }
+                              {felt   }
+     "Ah, but you should have {tasted } it before the Fire!"
+                              {smelled}
+                              {heard  }
+
+They say that about everything, old and new. They say it
+indiscriminately, without thought of what it means. They love the sound
+of it, and have made it a fixed habit. They say it about districts and
+buildings, about hotels, and the Barbary Coast (which is much like the
+old Bowery, in New York, and where ragtime dancing is said to have
+originated), and the Presidio (the military post, overlooking the sea),
+and Golden Gate Park (a semitropical wonder-place, built on what used to
+be sand dunes, and guarded by Park Policemen who carry lassos with which
+to stop runaways), and Chinatown, and the Fish Market (which resembles a
+collection of still-life studies by William M. Chase), and the Bank
+Exchange (which is not a commercial institution, but a venerable bar,
+presided over by Duncan Nicol, who came around the Horn with his
+eye-glasses over his ear, where he continues to wear them while mixing
+Pisco cocktails). They say it also of "Ernie" and his celebrated "Number
+Two" cocktail, with a hazelnut in it; and of the St. Francis Hotel
+(which is one of the best run and most perfectly cosmopolitan hotels in
+the country), and of the Fairmont Hotel (a wonderful pile, commanding
+the city and the bay as Bertolini's commands the city and the bay of
+Naples), and the Palace Hotel (where drinks are twenty-five cents each,
+as in the old days; where ripe olives are a specialty, and where, over
+the bar, hangs Maxfield Parrish's "Pied Piper," balancing the continent
+against his "Old King Cole," in the Knickerbocker bar, in New York).
+They say it about the Cliff House, (with its Sorrento setting, its seals
+barking on the rocks below, and its hectic turkey-trotting nights),
+about Tait's, and Solari's, and the Techau, and Frank's, and the Poodle
+Dog, and Marchand's, and Coppa's, and all the other restaurants; about
+the private diningrooms (which are a San Francisco specialty), about
+the pretty girls (which are another specialty), about the clubs (which
+are still another), about cable-cars, taxicabs, flowers, shrimps, crabs,
+sand-dabs (which are fish almost as good as English sole), and about
+everything else. They use it instead of "if you please," "thank you,"
+"good-morning," and "good-night." If there are no strangers to say it to
+they say it to one another. If you admire a man's wife and children he
+will say it, and the same thing occurs if you approve of his new hat.
+
+If the old San Francisco was indeed so far superior to the new, then
+Bagdad in the days of Haroun-al-Raschid would have been but a dull
+prairie town, compared with it.
+
+But was it?
+
+The San Francisco attitude upon this subject reminds me of that of the
+old French Royalists.
+
+A friend of mine, an American living in Paris, happened to inquire of a
+venerable Marquis concerning the _Palais de Glace_, where Parisians go
+to skate.
+
+"Ah, yes," replied the ancient aristocrat, raising his shoulders
+contemptuously, "one hears that the world now goes to skate under a
+roof, upon ice manufactured. Truly, all is changed, my friend. I assure
+you it was not like this under the Empire. In those times the lakes in
+the Bois used to freeze. But they do so no longer. It is not to be
+expected. Bah! This _sacre_ Republic!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+While in San Francisco, I noted down a number of odd items, some of them
+unimportant, which, when added together, have much to do with the flavor
+of the town. Having used the word "flavor," I may as well begin with
+drinks.
+
+Drinks cut an important figure in San Francisco life, as is natural in a
+wine-producing country. The merit of the best California wines is not
+appreciated in the East. Some of them are very good--much better,
+indeed, than a great deal of the imported wine brought from Europe. I
+have even tasted a California champagne which compares creditably with
+the ordinary run of French champagne, though when it comes to special
+vintages, California has not attained the French level.
+
+It is a general custom, in public bars and clubs to shake dice for
+drinks, instead of clamoring to "treat," according to the silly eastern
+custom, which as every one knows, often causes men to drink more than
+they wish to, just to be "good fellows." The free lunch, in connection
+with bars, is developed more highly in San Francisco than in any other
+city that I know of; also, Easterners will be surprised to find small
+onions, or nuts, in their cocktails, instead of olives. A popular
+cocktail on the Coast is the "Honolulu," which is like the familiar
+"Bronx," excepting that pineapple juice is used in place of orange
+juice.
+
+When my companion and I were in San Francisco a prohibition wave was
+threatening. Such a movement in a wine-producing country engenders very
+strong feeling, and I found, attached to the bills-of-fare in various
+restaurants, earnest pleas, addressed to voters, to turn out and cast
+their ballots against the temperance menace.
+
+Of prohibition the town had already had a taste--if one may use the
+expression. The reform movement had struck the Barbary Coast, the rule,
+at the time of our visit, being that there should be no dancing where
+alcoholic drinks were served, and no drinks where there was dancing.
+This law was enforced and it made the former region of festivity a sad
+place. Even the sailors and marines sitting about the dance-halls,
+consuming beer-substitutes, at a dollar a bottle, were melancholy
+figures, appearing altogether unresponsive to the sirens who surrounded
+them.
+
+Ordinary drinks at most bars in San Francisco are fifteen cents each, or
+two for a quarter, as in most other cities. That is to say, two drinks
+for "two bits."
+
+Like the American mill, or the English Guinea, the "bit," familiar on
+the Pacific Slope, is not a coin. The Californian will ask for change
+for a "quarter," or a "half," as we do in the East, but in making small
+purchases he will ask for two, or four, or six "bits' worth," a "bit"
+representing twelve-and-a-half cents. In the old days there were also
+"short bits" and "long bits," meaning, respectively ten cents, and
+fifteen cents, but these terms with their implied scorn of the copper
+cent, have died out.
+
+The humble penny is, however, still regarded contemptuously in San
+Francisco. Until quite recently all newspapers published there sold at
+five cents each, and that is still true of the morning papers, the
+"Chronicle" and the "Examiner." Lately the "Call" and the "Bulletin,"
+evening papers, have dropped in price to one cent each, but when the
+princely Son of the Golden West buys them, he will frequently pay the
+newsboy with a nickel, ignoring the change. Nor is the newsboy to be
+outdone in magnificence: when a five-cent customer asks for one paper
+the boy will very likely hand him both. They understand each other,
+these two, and meet on terms of a noble mutual liberality.
+
+As to Chinatown, those who knew it before the fire declare that its
+charm is gone, but my companion and I found interest in its shops, its
+printing offices and, most of all, in its telephone exchange.
+
+The San Francisco Telephone Directory has a section devoted to
+Chinatown, in which the names of Chinese subscribers are printed in both
+English and Chinese characters. Thus, if I wish to telephone to Boo Gay,
+Are Too, Chew Chu & Co., Doo Kee, Fat Hoo, the Gee How Tong, Gum Hoo,
+Hang Far Low, Jew Bark, Joke Key, King Gum, Shee Duck Co., Tin Hop &
+Co., To To Bete Shy, Too Too Guey, Wee Chun, Wing On & Co., Yet Bun
+Hung, Yet Ho, Yet You, or Yue Hock, all of whom I find in the
+directory--if I wish to telephone to them, I can look them up in English
+and call "China 148," or whatever the number may be. But if a Chinaman
+who cannot read English wishes to call, he calls by name only, which
+makes it necessary for operators to remember not merely the name and
+number of each Chinese subscriber, but to speak English and
+Chinese--including the nine Chinese provincial dialects.
+
+The operators are, of course, Chinese girls, and the exchange, which has
+over a thousand subscribers, representing about a tenth of the
+population of the Chinese district, is under the management of Mr. Loo
+Kum Shu, who was born in California and educated at the University of
+California. His assistant, Mr. Chin Sing, is also a native of the
+State, and is a graduate of the San Francisco public schools.
+
+For a "soulless corporation" the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Company
+has shown a good deal of imagination in constructing and equipping its
+Chinatown exchange. The building with its gaily decorated pagoda roof
+and balconies, makes a colorful spot in the center of Chinatown. Inside
+it is elaborately frescoed with dragons and other Chinese designs, while
+the woodwork is of ebony and gold. The switchboard is carved and is set
+in a shrine, and this fascinating incongruity, with the operators, all
+dressed in the richly colored silk costumes of their ancient
+civilization, poking in plugs, pulling them out, chattering now in
+English, now in Chinese, teaches one that anachronism may, under some
+conditions, be altogether charming.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One rumor concerning San Francisco restaurants appealed to my sinful
+literary imaginings. I had heard that these establishments resembled
+those of Paris, not only in cuisine, but because, as in Paris, the
+proprietors did not deem it necessary to stipulate that private
+diningrooms should never be occupied save by parties of more than two.
+
+Of one of these restaurants, in particular, I had been told the most
+amazing tales: A taxi would drive into the building by a sort of tunnel;
+great doors would close instantly behind it; it would run onto a large
+elevator and be taken bodily to some floor above, where the occupants
+would alight practically at the door of their clandestine
+meeting-place--an exquisite little apartment, decorated like the boudoir
+of some royal favorite. If it were indeed true that such a picturesquely
+shocking place existed, I intended--entirely in the interest of my
+readers, you will understand--to see it; and honesty forces me to add
+that I hoped, with journalistic immorality, that it did exist.
+
+One night I went there. True, the conditions were somewhat prosaic. It
+was quite late; my companion and I were tired, but we were near the end
+of our stay in San Francisco, and I insisted upon his accompanying me to
+the mysterious cafe, although he protested violently--not on moral
+grounds, but because he is sufficiently sophisticated to know that there
+is no subject upon which exaggeration gives itself _carte blanche_ as it
+does when describing gilded vice.
+
+The taxi did drive in through a kind of tunnel--a place suggesting coal
+wagons--but there were no massive, silent doors to close behind it.
+Passing into an inner court, which was like an empty garage, it stopped
+beside a little door.
+
+"Where is the elevator?" I asked the taxi driver.
+
+"In there," he answered, indicating the door.
+
+"But," I complained, "I heard that there was a big elevator here, that
+took taxis right up stairs."
+
+"There ain't," he said, succinctly.
+
+Telling him to wait, we entered the door and came upon an elevator and a
+solitary waiter, whom we informed of our desire to see the place.
+
+Obligingly he took us to an upper floor and opening the door of an
+apartment, showed us in.
+
+"Of course," he said, "all of them are not so fine as this."
+
+Alas for my imaginings, here was no rose-pink boudoir, no scene for a
+romantic meeting, but a room like one of those frightful parlor "sets"
+one sometimes sees in the cheapest moving pictures. However, in the
+movies one is spared the color of such a room; one may see that the
+wallpaper is of hideous design, but one cannot see its ghastly scrambled
+browns and greens and purples. As I glanced at the various furnishings
+it seemed to me that each was uglier than the last, and when finally my
+eye fell upon an automatic piano in a sort of combination of dark oak
+and art nouveau, with a stained glass front and a nickel in the slot
+attachment, my dream of a setting for sumptuous and esthetic sin was
+dead. It was a room in which adventure would taste like stale beer.
+
+My companion placed a nickel in the slot that fed the terrible piano.
+There was a whirring sound, succeeded, not by low seductive strains, but
+by a sudden din of ragtime which crashed upon our ears as the
+decorations had upon our eyes.
+
+Hastily I moved towards the door. My companion followed.
+
+[Illustration: The switchboard of the Chinatown telephone exchange is
+set in a shrine and the operators are dressed in Chinese silks]
+
+"If the gentlemans would wish to see some other apartments--?" suggested
+the obliging waiter, as we closed the door.
+
+"Oh, no thanks," I said. "This gives us a good idea of it."
+
+As we moved towards the elevator the waiter asked politely: "The
+gentlemans have never been in here before?"
+
+"No," I said, "we don't live in San Francisco. We had heard about this
+place and wanted to see it before we went away."
+
+"It is a famous place," he said. Then, with a shake of the head, he
+added, "But before the Fire----Ah, the gentlemans should have seen it
+then!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+AN EXPOSITION AND A "BOOSTER"
+
+
+The Panama Pacific Exposition will unquestionably be the most beautiful
+exposition ever held in the world. Its setting is both accessible and
+lovely, for it has the city upon one side and the bay and the Golden
+Gate upon the other.
+
+Instead of being smooth and white like those of previous World's Fairs,
+the buildings have the streaked texture of travertine stone, with a
+general coloring somewhat warmer than that of travertine. Domes,
+doorways and other architectural details are rich in soft greens and
+blues, and the whole group of buildings, viewed from the hills behind,
+resembles more than anything else a great architectural drawing by Jules
+Guerin, made into a reality. And that, in effect, is what it is, for
+Guerin has ruled over everything that has to do with color, from the
+roads which will have a warm reddish tone, to the mural decorations and
+the lighting.
+
+The exposition will hold certain records from the start. It will be the
+first great exposition ever held in a seaport. It will be, if I mistake
+not, the first to be ready on time. It will be the first held to
+celebrate a contemporaneous event, and its contemporaneousness will be
+reflected in its exhibitions, for, with the exception of a loan
+collection of art, nothing will be shown which has not been produced
+since the St. Louis Exposition of 1904. Also, I am informed, it is the
+first American exposition to have an appropriation for mural paintings.
+True, there were mural paintings at the Chicago World's Fair, but they
+were not provided for by appropriation, having been paid for by the late
+Frank Millet, with money saved from other things.
+
+Of the painters who will have mural decorations at the Exposition, but
+one, Frank Brangwyn, is not an American. Also, but one is a Californian,
+that one being Arthur F. Mathews.
+
+The only mural decorations in the Fine Arts Building will be eight
+enormous panels by Robert Reid, in the interior of the dome, eighty feet
+above the floor. Four of the panels symbolize Art; the others the "four
+golds of California": poppies, citrus fruits, metallic gold and golden
+wheat. Among the various excursions to the Exposition, I hope there will
+be one for old-school mural decorators--men who paint stiff central
+figures in brick-red robes, enthroned, and surrounded by cog-wheels,
+propellers, and bales of cotton, with the invariable male figures
+petrified at a forge upon one side, and the invariable inert mothers and
+children upon the other--I hope there will be an excursion to take such
+painters out and show them the brave swirl and sweep of line, the light,
+and the nacreous color which this artist has thrown into his decorations
+at the Fair.
+
+Aside from the work of Mr. Reid, Edward Simmons has done two large
+frieze panels of great beauty, Frank Vincent Du Mond, two others, Childe
+Hassam, a lunette in most exquisite tones, and William de Leftwich
+Dodge, Milton H. Bancroft and Charles Holloway, other canvases, so that,
+the finished exposition will be fairly jeweled with mural paintings.
+
+It is hard to write about expositions and mural paintings, without
+seeming to infringe upon the prerogatives of Baedeker, and it is
+particularly difficult to do so if one has happened to be shown about by
+a professional shower-about of the singularly voluble type we
+encountered at the Exposition.
+
+To the reader who has followed my companion and me in our
+peregrinations, now drawing to a close, it will be unnecessary to say
+that by the time we reached the Pacific Coast, we believed we had
+encountered every kind of "booster" that creeps, crawls, walks, crows,
+cries, bellows, barks or brays.
+
+But we had not. It remained for the San Francisco Exposition to show us
+a new specimen, the most amazing, the most appalling, the most
+unbelievable of all: the booster who talks like a book.
+
+It was on the day before we left for home that we were delivered up to
+him. We had been keeping late hours, and were tired in a happy, drowsy
+sort of way, so that the prospect of being wafted through the morning
+sunshine to the exposition grounds, in an open automobile, and cruising
+about, among the buildings, without alighting, and without care or
+worry, was particularly pleasing to us.
+
+The automobile came at the appointed hour, and with it the being who was
+to be our pilot. Full of confidence and trust, we got into the car, but
+we had not proceeded more than a few blocks, and heard our cicerone
+speak more than a few hundred thousand words, before our bosoms became
+filled with that "vague unrest" which, though you may never have
+experienced it yourself, you have certainly read about before.
+
+I had not planned to have any vague unrest in this book, but it stole in
+upon me, unexpectedly, out there by the Golden Gate, just at the end of
+my journey, when I was off my guard, believing that the perils of the
+trip were past.
+
+We had driven in that automobile but a few minutes, and had heard our
+guide speak not more than two hundred and fifty or three hundred
+thousand words, when my first vague feeling turned into a certainty that
+all was not for the best; and when I caught the eye of my companion and
+saw that its former drowsy look had given place to one of wild alarm, I
+knew that he shared my apprehension.
+
+By the time we reached the fair grounds I had become so perturbed that I
+hardly knew where we were.
+
+"Stop here," I heard our captor say to the chauffeur.
+
+The car drew up between two glorious terracotta palaces. Directly ahead
+was the blue bay, and beyond it rose Mount Tamalpais in a gray-green
+haze. Our custodian arose from his seat, stepped to the front of the
+tonneau, and turning, fixed first one of us and then the other with a
+gaze that seemed to eat its way into our vitals. Through an awful moment
+of portentous silence we stared back at him like fascinated idiots. He
+raised one arm and swept it around the horizon. Then, of a sudden, he
+was off:
+
+"Born a drowsy Spanish hamlet, fed on the intoxicants of man's lust for
+gold, developed by an adventurous and a baronial agriculture, isolated
+throughout its turbulent history from the home lands of its diverse
+peoples, and compelled to the outworking of its own ethical and social
+standards, the sovereign City of San Francisco has developed within her
+confines an individuality and a versatility, equaled by but few other
+cities, and surpassed by none."
+
+At that point he took a breath, and a fresh start:
+
+"It mellowed the sternness of the Puritan and disciplined the dashing
+Cavalier. It appropriated the unrivaled song and pristine art of the
+Latin. Every good thing the Anglo-Saxon, Celt, Gaul, Iberian, Teuton or
+almond-eyed son of Confucius had to offer, it seized upon and made part
+of its life."
+
+Another breath, and it began again:
+
+"Here is no thralldom of the past, but a trying of all things on their
+merits, and a searching of every proposal or established institution by
+the one test: Will it make life happier?"
+
+As he went on I was becoming conscious of an over-mastering desire to
+do something to stop him. I felt that I must interrupt to save my
+reason, so I pointed in the direction of Mount Tamalpais, and cried:
+
+"What is that, over there?"
+
+His eyes barely flickered towards the mountain, as he answered:
+
+"That is Mount Tamalpais which may be reached by a journey of nineteen
+miles by ferry, electric train and steam railroad. This lofty height
+rears itself a clean half-mile above the sparkling waters of our
+unrivaled bay. The mountain itself is a domain of delight. From its
+summit the visitor may see what might be termed the ground plan of the
+greatest landlocked harbor on the Pacific Ocean, and of the region
+surrounding it--a region destined to play so large a part in the affairs
+of men."
+
+"Good God!" I heard my companion ejaculate in an agonized whisper.
+
+But if our tormentor overheard he paid not the least attention.
+
+"We know," he continued in his sing-song tone, "that you will find here
+what you never found, and never can find, elsewhere. We shall try to
+augment your pleasure by indicating something of its origin in the
+city's romantic past. We shall give you your bearings in time and place.
+We shall endeavor to make smooth your path. We shall tell you what to
+seek and how to find it, and mayhap, what it means. We shall endeavor to
+endow you with the eyes to see, the ears to hear, and the heart to
+understand. In short, it is to help the visitor to comprehend,
+appreciate and enjoy 'the City Loved Around the World,' with its
+surpassingly beautiful environs, that this little handbook is issued."
+
+"That _what_?" shrieked my companion.
+
+The human guidebook calmly corrected himself.
+
+"That I am here with you to-day," he said.
+
+Through two interminable hours the thing went on and on like that.
+Several times, in the first hour, we tried to stop him by this means or
+that, but after awhile we learned that interruptions only opened other
+floodgates, and that it was best, upon the whole, to try to cultivate a
+state of inner numbness, and let his voice roll on.
+
+Sometimes I fancied that I was becoming passive and resigned. Then
+suddenly a wave of hate would come boiling up inside me, and my fingers
+would itch to be at the man's throat: to strangle him, not rapidly, but
+slowly, so that he would suffer. I wanted to see his tongue hang out,
+his eyes bulge, and his face turn blue; to see him swell up, as he kept
+generating words, inside, until at last, being unable to emit them, he
+should burst, like an overcharged balloon.
+
+Once or twice I was on the verge of leaping at him, but then I would
+think to myself: "No; I must not consider my own pleasure. If I kill him
+it will get into the New York papers, and my family and friends will not
+understand it, because they have not heard him talk."
+
+[Illustration: We believed we had encountered every kind of "booster"
+that creeps, crawls, walks, crows, cries, bellows, barks or brays, but
+it remained for the Exposition to show us a new specimen]
+
+Somehow or other my companion and I managed to survive until lunch time,
+but then we insisted upon being taken back to the St. Francis. He did
+not want to take us. He did not like to let us escape, even for an hour,
+for it was only too evident that several five-foot-shelves of books were
+still inside him, eager to get out.
+
+At the door of the hotel he said: "I could stop and lunch with you. In
+that way we would lose no time. Ah, there is so much to be told! What
+city in the world can vie with San Francisco either in the beauty or the
+natural advantages of her situation? Indeed there are but two places in
+Europe--Constantinople and Gibraltar--that combine an equally perfect
+landscape with what may be called an equally imperial position. Yes, I
+think we had better remain together during this brief midday period at
+which, from time immemorial, it has been the custom of the human race to
+minister to the wants of the inner man, as the great bard puts it."
+
+"Thank you," said my companion, firmly. "We appreciate the offer, but we
+have an engagement to lunch, to-day, with several friends who are
+troubled with bubonic plague and Asiatic cholera."
+
+"So be it," said our warden. "I shall return for you within the hour. It
+shall be my pleasure, as well as my duty, to show you all points of
+interest, to give you a brief historical sketch of this coveted Mecca of
+men's dreams, to tell you of its awakening, of the bringing of order out
+of chaos, of...."
+
+It was still going on as we entered the hotel, and from a window, we saw
+that he was sitting alone in the tonneau, talking to himself, as the
+motor drove away.
+
+"How long will it take you to pack?" my companion asked me.
+
+"About an hour," I said.
+
+"There's a train for New York at two," said he.
+
+We moved over to the porter's desk, and were arranging for tickets and
+reservations when the Exposition Official, who had assigned our guide to
+us, passed through the lobby.
+
+"Did you enjoy your morning?" he inquired.
+
+We gazed at him for a moment, in silence. Then, in a hoarse voice, I
+managed to say: "We shall not go out with him this afternoon."
+
+"But he is counting on it," protested the Official.
+
+"_We shall not go out with him this afternoon!_" said my companion, in a
+voice that caused heads to turn.
+
+"Why not?" inquired the other.
+
+I was afraid that my companion might say something rude, so I replied.
+
+"We are going away from here," I declared.
+
+"Oh," said the Official, "if you have to leave town, it can't be helped.
+But if you should stay in San Francisco and refuse to go out with him
+again, it might hurt his feelings."
+
+"Good!" returned my companion. "We won't go until to-morrow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+NEW YORK AGAIN
+
+
+On my first night in San Francisco I sat up late, unpacking and
+distributing my things about my room; it was early morning when I was
+ready to retire, and it occurred to me that I had better leave a call.
+
+"Please call me at nine," I said to the telephone operator.
+
+"Nine o'clock," she repeated, and in a voice like a caress, added:
+"Good-night."
+
+It was very pleasant to be told good-night, like that, even though the
+sweet voice was strange, and came over a wire; for my companion and I
+had been traveling for a long, long time, and though the strangers we
+had met had been most hospitable, and though many of them had soon
+ceased to be strangers, and had become friends, and though we had often
+said--and not without sincerity--that we "felt very much at home," we
+had now reached a state of mind in which we realized that, to say one
+"feels at home" when one is not actually at home, is, after all, to
+stretch the truth a little.
+
+I must have gone to sleep immediately and I knew nothing more until I
+was awakened in the morning by the tinkle of the telephone.
+
+I jumped out of bed and answered.
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Street," came a voice even sweeter than that of the
+night before. "Nine o'clock."
+
+As I may have mentioned previously, I do not, as a rule, feel cheerful
+on the moment of arising, especially in a strange room, a strange hotel,
+and a strange city. But the pleasant personal note contained in that
+morning greeting, the charming tone in which it was delivered, and
+perhaps, in addition, the great warm patch of melted California gold
+which lay upon the carpet near my window--these things combined to make
+me feel awake, alive and happy, at the beginning of the day.
+
+Every night, after that, I left a call, whether I really wished to be
+called, or not, just for the sake of the "good-night," and the
+"good-morning" with my name appended. For it is very pleasant to be
+known, in a great hotel, as something more than a mere number.
+
+I said to myself, "That morning operator has learned from the papers
+that I am here. She has probably read things I have written, and is
+interested in me. Doubtless she boasts to her friends: 'Julian Street,
+the author, is stopping down at the hotel. I call him every morning. He
+has a pleasant voice. I wish I could see him, once.'"
+
+Because of modesty I did not mention this flattering attention to my
+companion until the day before we left San Francisco, and then I was
+only induced to speak of it by something which occurred when we were
+shopping.
+
+It was at Gump's--that most fascinating Oriental store--and having made
+a purchase which I wished them to deliver, I mentioned my name and
+address to the clerk who, however, seemed to have some difficulty in
+getting it correctly, setting me down at first as "Mr. Julius Sweet."
+
+When my companion chose to taunt me about that, dwelling with apparent
+delight upon the painfully evident fact that my name meant nothing to
+the clerk, I retorted:
+
+"That makes no difference. The telephone operator at the St. Francis
+calls me by name every morning."
+
+"So she does me," he returned.
+
+I did not believe him. I could not think that this beautiful young
+girl--I was sure that any girl with such a voice must be young and
+beautiful--would cheapen her vocal favors by dispensing them broadcast.
+For her to coo my name to me each morning was merely a delicate
+attention, but for her to do the same to him seemed, somehow, brazen.
+
+I pondered the matter as I went to bed that night, and in the morning,
+when the bell rang, I thought of it immediately.
+
+"Hello."
+
+"Good-morning, Mr. Street. Eight o'clock," came the mellifluous
+cadences.
+
+"Good-morning," I replied. "This is the last time you will call me, so I
+want to say good-by, and thank you. You and the other operator always
+say 'good-night' and 'good-morning' very pleasantly and I wish you to
+know I have appreciated it. And when _you_ call me you always do so by
+name. That has pleased me too."
+
+"Thank you," she said--and oh! the dulcet tone in which she spoke the
+words.
+
+"How did you happen to know my name?" I asked.
+
+"Oh," she replied--and seemed to hesitate for just an instant--"Mr.
+Woods has given us instructions always to call by name."
+
+"You mean in my case?" I asked, somewhat nervously.
+
+"In making all morning calls," she explained. "At night, when the night
+operator isn't busy, she takes the call list, gets the names of the
+people, and notes them down opposite the room numbers so that I can read
+them off, when I ring, in the morning. Mr. Woods says that it makes
+guests feel more at home."
+
+"It does," I assured her sadly. Then, in justice, I added: "Nevertheless
+you have a most agreeable voice."
+
+"It's very kind of you to speak of it," she returned.
+
+"Not at all," said I. "I am writing something about San Francisco, and I
+want to know your name so that I can mention you as the owner of the
+voice."
+
+"Oh," she said, "are you a writer?"
+
+"I am," I declared firmly.
+
+"And you're really going to mention me?"
+
+"I am if you will give me your name."
+
+"It's Lulu Maguire," she said. "Will you let me know when it comes out?"
+
+"I will," said I.
+
+"Thank you very much," she answered. "I hope you'll come again."
+
+"I hope so too."
+
+Then we said good-by. And though I cannot say of the angel-voiced Miss
+Maguire that she taught me about women, she did teach me something about
+writers, and something else about hotels.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I had always fancied that an unbroken flight across the continent would
+prove fatiguing and seem very, very long, but however others may have
+found it, it seemed short to me.
+
+Looking back over the run from the Pacific Coast to Chicago I feel as
+though it had consumed but a night and one long, interesting day--a day
+full of changing scenes and episodes. The three things I remember best
+about the journey are the beauty of the Bad Lands, the wonderful squab
+guinea chicken I had, one night, for dinner, in the dining car, and the
+pretty girl with the demure expression and the mischievous blue eyes,
+who, before coming aboard at a little western station, kissed a handsome
+young cattleman good-by, and who, having later made friends with a gay
+young blade upon the train, kissed him good-by, also, when they parted
+on the platform in Chicago.
+
+Railroad travel in the West does not seem so machine-like as in the
+East. That is true in many ways. West of Chicago you do not feel that
+your train is sandwiched in between two other trains, one just ahead,
+the other just behind. You run for a long time without passing another
+train, and when you do pass one, it is something in the nature of an
+event, like passing another ship, at sea. So, also, on the train, the
+relations between passengers and crew are not merely mechanical. You
+feel that the conductor is a human being, and that the dining-car
+conductor is distinctly a nice fellow.
+
+But once you pass Chicago, going east, the individuality of train
+officials ceases to be felt. They become automatons, very efficient, but
+cold as cogs in a machine. As for you, you are a unit, to be transported
+and fed, and they do transport and feed you, doing it all impartially
+and impersonally, performing their duties with the most rigid decorum,
+and the most cold-blooded correctness.
+
+Even the food in the dining-car seems to be standardized. The dishes
+look differently, and vary mildly in flavor, but there is one taste
+running through everything, as though the whole meal were made from some
+basic substance, colored and flavored in different ways, to create a
+variety of courses. The great primary taste of eastern dining-car food
+is, as nearly as I can hit on it, that of wet paper. The oysters seem to
+be made of slippery wet paper with oyster-flavor added. The soup is a
+sort of creamy essence of manilla. The chicken is damp paper, ground up,
+soaked with chicken-extract, and pressed into the form of a deceased
+bird. And, above all, the salad is green tissue-paper, soaked in
+vinegar and water.
+
+[Illustration: New York--Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone is dodging
+everyone else. Everyone is trying to keep his knees from being knocked
+by swift-passing suitcases]
+
+As with the officials, so with the passengers. They become frigid, too.
+If, forgetting momentarily that you are no longer in the West, you speak
+to the gentleman who has the seat beside you in the buffet smoker, after
+dinner, he takes a long appraising look at you before replying. Then,
+after answering you briefly, and in such a way as to give you as little
+information as possible, and to impress upon you the idea that you have
+been guilty of gross familiarity in speaking to a social superior
+without having first been spoken to by him--then the gentleman will rise
+from his chair and move to another seat, feeling, the while, to make
+sure that you have not got his watch.
+
+That, gentle reader, is the sweet spirit of the civilized East.
+Easterners regard men with whom they are not personally acquainted as
+potential pickpockets; and men with whom they are acquainted as
+established thieves.
+
+On you rush towards the metropolis. The train is crowded. The farms,
+flying past, are small, and are divided into little fields which look
+cramped after the great open areas of the West. Towns and cities flash
+by, one after another, in quick succession, as the floors flash by an
+express elevator, shooting down, its shaft in a skyscraper; and where
+there are no towns there are barns painted with advertisements, and
+great advertising signboards disfiguring the landscape. There are four
+tracks now. A passenger train roars by, savagely, on one side, and is
+gone, while on the other, a half-mile freight train tugs and squeaks and
+clatters.
+
+When the porter calls you in the morning, and you raise your window
+shade, you see no plains or mountains, but the backs of squalid suburban
+tenements, with vari-colored garments fluttering on their clothes lines,
+like the flags of some ship decked for a gala day.
+
+Gathering yourself and your dusty habiliments together, you sneak
+shamefully to the washroom. Already it is full of men: men in trousers
+and undershirt, men with tousled hair and stubble chins, men with bags
+and dressing-cases spread out on the seats, splattering men, who immerse
+their faces in the swinging suds of the nickel-plated washbowl, and
+snort like seals in the aquarium.
+
+Ah, the East! The throbbing, thriving, thickly-populated East!
+
+Presently you get your turn at a sloppy washbowl, after which you slip
+into the stale clothing of the day before, and return to the body of the
+car, feeling half washed, half dressed and half dead.
+
+Outside are factories, and railroad yards, and everywhere tall black
+chimneys, vomiting their heavy, muddy smoke. But always the train glides
+on like some swift, smooth river. Now the track is elevated, now
+depressed. You run over bridges or under them, crossing streets and
+other railroads. At last you dive into a tunnel and presently emerging,
+coast slowly along beside an endless concrete platform raised to the
+level of the car floor.
+
+Your bags have long since been carried away by the Pullman porter, and
+you have sat for many minutes in the hot car, wearing the overcoat and
+hat into which he insisted upon putting you when you were yet many miles
+outside New York.
+
+Before the train stops you are in the narrow passage-way at the end of
+the car, lined-up with others eager to escape. The Redcaps run beside
+the vestibule. That is one good thing: there are always plenty of
+porters in New York.
+
+The Pullman porter hands your bags to a station porter, and you hand the
+Pullman porter something which elicits a swift: "Thank you, boss."
+
+Then, through the crowd, you make your way, behind your Redcap, towards
+the taxi-stand. In the great concourse, people are rushing hither and
+thither. Every one is in a hurry. Every one is dodging every one else.
+Every one is trying to keep his knees from being knocked by
+swift-passing suitcases. You feel dazed, rushed, jostled.
+
+It is always the same, the arrival in New York. The stranger setting
+foot there for the first time may, perhaps, sense more keenly than the
+returning resident, the magnificent fury of the city. But, upon reaching
+the metropolis after a period of exile, the most confirmed New Yorker
+must, unless his perceptions are quite ossified, feel his imagination
+quicken as he is again confronted by the whirling, grinding, smashing,
+shrieking, seething, writhing, glittering, hellish splendor of the City
+of New York.
+
+Never before, it seemed to me, had I felt the impact of the city as when
+I moved through the crowded concourse of the Pennsylvania Terminal with
+my companion--the comrade of so many trains and tickets, so many miles
+and meals.
+
+We were at our journey's end. We were in New York again at last and
+would be in our respective homes as soon as taxicabs could take us to
+them. But, eager as I was to reach my home, it was with a kind of pang
+that I realized that now, for the first time in months, we would not
+drive away together in the same taxicab, but would part here, at the
+taxi-stand, and go our separate ways; that we would not dine together
+that night, nor sup together, nor visit in each other's rooms to talk
+over the day's doings, before turning in, nor breakfast together in the
+morning, nor match coins to determine who should pay for things.
+
+When the first taxi came up there were politenesses between us as to
+which should take it--that in itself bespoke the change already coming
+over us.
+
+I persuaded him to get in. We shook hands hurriedly through the window.
+Then, with a jerk, the taxi started.
+
+As I watched it drive away, I thought: "What a fine thing to know that
+man as I know him! Have I always been as considerate of him, on this
+trip, as I should have been? Was it right for me to insist on his
+staying up that night, in San Francisco, when he wanted to go to bed?
+Was it right for me to insist on his going to bed that night, in
+Excelsior Springs, when he wanted to stay up? Shouldn't I have taken
+more interest in his packing? And if I had done so, would he have left
+his razor in one hotel, and his pumps in another, and his bathrobe in
+another, and his kodak in another, and his umbrella in another, and his
+silver shoehorn in another, and his trousers in another, and his pajamas
+in every hotel we stopped in?"
+
+Then my taxi drove up and I got in, and as we scurried out into the
+congested street, I kept on ruminating over my treatment of my traveling
+companion.
+
+"I never treated him badly," I thought. "Still, if I had it all to do
+over again I should treat him better. I should tuck him in at night. I
+should send his shoes to be polished and his clothes to be pressed. I
+should perform all kinds of little services for him--not because he
+deserves such treatment, but because that would get him under
+obligations to me. And it is a most desirable thing to get a man under
+obligations to you when he knows as much about you as that man knows
+about me!"
+
+
+
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